


Breaking the Seal

by florahart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Explicit Consent, F/M, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Lily loved her sister, Petunia learning that sex can be fun, Petunia learning to have family, Slow Build, past Vernon/Petunia, past sexual violence, present (but repelled) domestic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-29
Updated: 2008-04-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:18:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5848228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petunia didn't know why she'd kept the box under Lily's bed, but it turned out, it might be useful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking the Seal

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for an exchange in 2008. I'd reposted it, post-exchange, but at a website which is no longer available, and have been asked to repost here. The exchange for which this was written was hp_beholder, the premise of which was to write fic in which characters who are widely perceived as unlovely have starring, and sexual, roles without being "fixed" to make them prettier. (I loved this fest every year it ran)
> 
> It's a long enough fic that I'm putting it up without going through it to figure out what to tag (okay, now I have tagged some, but I'll leave the note because it's an opportunity to say if a reader thinks something else should be tagged, let me know--tagging in 2008 was kind of not a thing?), but I will note that Vernon Dursley is a violent asshole, and some of his violence is related to sex behavior so while there is not explicit rape in the fic, it's clear that sexual violence has existed.

Harry had been gone for a year and some months when Petunia unwound the string on the flap and opened the box for the first time in …she thought back.  Twenty years, she supposed. The box was in remarkably good shape, after three secretive moves from flat to flat to home in Surrey, when they were first married, and after two decades to deteriorate. It wasn't especially dusty, either. It opened, as ever, smoothly--unnaturally so for simple cardboard, which, it occurred to her now for the first time, probably meant it had been subjected to Lily's magic, which sent a hair-shivering shock up through her fingers on the top to the elbow.

She sighed and pulled the top the rest of the way up.

She'd never really meant to keep it in the first place, or at least, she'd said she wouldn't, but it had been left, wedged under Lily's bed when she married that James, and all right, she'd been curious, about any number of things, and also, all right, it had been Lily's, and she knew Lily wasn't coming home any more, for summers or holidays or any other time, and despite everything, still, Petunia didn't quite feel right about hating her.

No, that wasn't it, not exactly.  It was more that she'd still loved her, still remembered the little sister that had toddled after her when they were five and two and pulled up Mother's daisies to give her with a chubby-cheeked grin. If she were honest, that was why the box was still here. 

Not that there was any chance, when she'd first pulled open the box, that she'd have admitted it.  No, she'd opened it because she was going to throw everything out. She was getting married the following week, and Lily had gone and stolen her thunder (again), probably on purpose. Well, no, probably she was pregnant; why else would she leave school and get married in such a rush, if it weren't that, which only went to show all the freaky talent in the world didn't make up for impetuosity and carelessness.

Of course, Petunia knew now, as her fingers brushed the tissue, that it hadn't been that, because Harry was the same age as Dudley, and she certainly hadn't been so incautious as to allow any behavior that might lead to such an outcome, despite that she despised the alternative Vernon had insisted upon, when she aroused him. She shook her head and wondered why on earth she'd let him push her so; even now, she remembered the weight and the bitter tang on her tongue with distaste. 

Well, at least he hadn't pushed for anything worse. Hadn't pushed for anything at all, in fact, in a long, long time; he'd been repulsed by her belly when she was big with Dudley, and then he'd been nauseated, after, when her breasts leaked milk, even though of course, she fed Dudley from the bottle because all her friends--all the wives of Vernon's friends--said it was best.

Her milk had dried up quickly enough, but Vernon's disgust had remained, and eventually, he'd simply gone elsewhere to meet his needs. She couldn't say it wasn't a relief, really; she'd never found much pleasure, trapped under his bulk as he huffed and snorted above her and then half the time fell asleep right there, crushing her there with her hips cramped from holding open around him and her breathing shallow from the weight. Finding assorted blonde and ginger hairs, and the occasional smear of candy-pink lipstick, on his underpants and collars had lifted a weight off her just as surely as working her way out from under him had always done.

She shook her head again to clear away the thought; she hadn't opened the box because she wanted to think about sex with Vernon. She never wanted to think about that, actually. She'd opened it because in the midst of the rather strange conversation with the woman downstairs, it had occurred to her that it, unlike so many of their things, might still be here. 

They'd returned home the previous June, late, just as it was starting to get warm at last, to a garden that was overgrown with horrid weeds, to neighbors who apparently were unfamiliar with the decency to leave them to their thoughts, and to a home which had been the target of more than a handful of opportunistic thieves. Nearly everything had been gone, knocked over, broken, or damaged, depending mostly on how transportable it was.

It had been a bit of a shock. They'd never been bothered by thieves before, had never even had trouble, as the neighbors had, with the occasional inconsiderate dog-owner allowing his mongrel to leave droppings in their garden. Vernon had been livid, furious that his property had been damaged, and Dudley had wailed about his second television, which he'd mentioned with fondness several times on the journey home, but Petunia had merely stood, nodding, and thought about the single newspaper photograph she'd seen, some time near Christmas, in the odd little circular the witch Hestia had read, of someplace called Godfrey's Hollow or the like, someplace Harry had evidently been, that had been destroyed. Their home had seen the same sort of treatment, and she hadn't been surprised.

At least, she'd been unsurprised until Hestia and that odd little Dedalus with her had set about repairing things--what things were left--as best they could. That had been surprising. Vernon had tried to throw them out for it, but Hestia had glared at him and cursed him silent and still--not a curse, really, she said, just a charm, and Petunia didn't know for certain what was the difference, but she'd taken Dudley into the kitchen and made him a cup of tea as soon as Hestia had repaired two cups and the kettle. The tea in the cupboard was unremarkable and unmolested, if rather old.

It occurred to her now, as she poked her finger in through the tissue, that their previous good fortune, which had kept their home unusually safe for all those years, might have been because the house had always borne the protections that kept Harry alive, and the shuddering shock ran up her arm again and through her body. The hair on her thighs prickled against the cloth of her skirt, and she ran her hand along the fabric, smoothing and soothing, biting her lip. She'd never quite thought in the abstract about the power being used responsibly, even if she'd certainly seen it sometimes, and for an instant, her stomach clenched as events in her mind shifted, as if her memory turned ten degrees to the left and all at once the picture was not the same at all. She closed the lid loosely on the box, suddenly aware she'd been up here several minutes for no good reason, and stood to carry it downstairs, feeling slightly stunned and slightly surprised and considerably perturbed.

"Were you able to find it?" Augusta Longbottom--and what kind of a name was that, anyway? Dreadful, really, though she'd said to just call her Augusta, which wasn't _so_ bad--looked up as she came around the end of the banister.

Petunia blinked. "Yes, of course."

"Ah. Charmed, then."

"What?" Petunia looked at the box in her hands. It was solid and weighty, full of scraps and memorabilia of childhood and school, and she held it out.

"I can't see it." The woman's gaze softened for a moment, as though she were looking through Petunia and into, perhaps, the house next door, and she nodded. "It's a hell of a charm. Because I know you're holding it, I can nearly see the outline, but I'm no slouch, and I can't make out the details at all."

Petunia tightened her grip to avoid dropping the box. "Really?" 

Augusta nodded and set her cup aside, pushing aside the nose of the cat that had taken up residence here while they were gone. It was stubborn, and house-broken, and after putting it out half a dozen times, Petunia had concluded it intended to stay. Augusta ran her hand over its ears and looked up. She was clearly older, old enough, as she'd said herself, to be Petunia's mother and then some, and her skin was soft and lined, but her manner was not that of the elderly women Petunia knew, and she wasn't in any way frail as she stood and held out her hands. "May I?"

The urge to clutch the box to her chest was irrational, Petunia knew. She'd only kept it on impulse, and it made her queasy again to know that all these years she'd kept something charmed in her home, charmed so that this old witch, who struck her as powerful and decisive and certainly not blind, couldn't see it, while she could. She held it out. "Will that help you to see it, then?"

Augusta chuckled, her round face pleasant when it wasn't severe. "No, my dear. But it might allow me to break the charm without breaking the object." She took the box carefully, balancing it on one hand and feeling along the top and sides with the other, fingers trailing lightly over the cardboard. "Ah. Quite proficient, your sister was."

"So I was told," Petunia agreed, gritting her teeth slightly.

Augusta looked at her sharply. "That isn't a criticism of you, you know. That she had a particular talent doesn't diminish whatever your special skills were." She pursed her lips. "My Neville may think I don't know that, as frustrated as I was when he showed no magic for so very long, but it was only, you see, that he had no other family. Or at least, mostly that; I can't say I'd have been entirely pleased to have a Squib as my only heir. I probably should have been more clear, but after he lost Frank and Alice…" She trailed off. "Well, enough of that. Would you like me to try to break the charm?"

"You can, then?" Something about the way she'd asked made Petunia feel warm. Well, no, really, it was more _that_ she'd asked, that she'd included Petunia in the decision. Which really ought not to be such a shock; Petunia was an adult, was forty-one years old, and she made decisions every day. For instance, whether to have boiled potatoes or noodles with the chicken. 

"I can try. I'm no slouch with charms, but I'm no master, either; I see the nature of it, but I can't be certain. I won't damage it, though, the box itself."

"You can see the magic?"

"Yes. Clever, really. It's very much keyed to you."

"It is? What does that mean?"

"It means," Augusta explained, "that it's yours to control. I wouldn’t have a chance, if you didn't allow it."

"But I thought--"

"You thought what?"

"Well. I'm not, you know."

"A witch?"

"A freak," Petunia said, hardening her tone of habit as much as on purpose.

Augusta's lips pursed as she looked up, and she took a moment before she answered. "I see. Well, we all have our prejudices, I suppose, and as I said, they're sometimes difficult to move past. But you must know she didn't think of you in such unflattering terms."

"How could you possibly guess that?"

"She'd never have left you the kinds of things you said were in here, especially not when her life was threatened, especially not when it was clear-- _so_ clear, after the Prewetts and the McKinnons--what could happen. Not without a message. Not without asking someone to compel you to bring these things somewhere in order that they might be found." Augusta smiled, and if it was a little tight around the edges, Petunia supposed that wasn't unreasonable. "She trusted you."

Petunia paused as well, then nodded. "If you say so. Do you mind if I ask…"

"What happened to the Prewetts and McKinnons?"

"Yes. …You aren't reading my mind, I hope?"

"Not among my skills, but I wouldn’t without asking, or at least, not without dire need." Augusta sat back down, setting the box carefully on the coffee table between them. "I don't play with people's minds."

"So it's possible, as Severus said."

"Your nephew underestimates you."

Petunia frowned, puzzled by the non-sequitur. "What?"

"He thought this would be a fruitless effort," Augusta explained. "He thought that if you ever had anything, you'd surely have thrown it out years ago, and furthermore, that you'd certainly never admit you knew a bloody thing. About Lily, or about Severus. He'd be shocked, probably speechless, that you listened to a thing the man--boy, when you knew him--said."

"Oh. Well, he made up what seemed to be the most fanciful stories," Petunia said. "They couldn’t be true, and then some of them were, and…" She shook her head, unable to explain the complicated jealousy and horror and unformed longing she'd felt, longing to know what Lily knew. She didn't add that Augusta was the third try; there had been a letter from a rather bossy young woman who said she was a friend of Harry's, and another from a P. Weasley, Temporary Special Assistant for Remembrance and Rebuilding, Office the Minister. She'd binned them both. Harry hadn't been so far off.

"Yes, well, your boy told us about all manner of things we could hardly credit, as well, though I, at least, assumed the reality included a context he'd not appreciated. Children don't always see the full picture, after all."

Petunia flushed, hoping, uncertainly, that Harry hadn't told _this_ woman about the closet beneath the stairs. She twisted her hands in her lap. "You don't want to talk about them, then?"

"It isn't that. It's that they aren't all we lost--You know that, but the Prewetts and the McKinnons were only some of the story, along with your sister, and my son and his wife. They're still alive, after a fashion, but they were lost, too."

"I don't understand. They were crippled?"

"So to speak. It's not that I won't explain; I've long ago come to terms with what they are now. It's merely that the story is larger than that."

"Are they fr--what did you say? Quids?"

"Squibs, and no. They were tortured."

Petunia gasped. "But, weren't they able to defend themselves? They were, you know, like Lily!"

Augusta shook her head. "The word is witch. And no. Not against evil-minded wizards intent on finding your sister."

"They wanted… Tortured how?"

"By magic, of course. There are hexes, and I imagine you saw some of them, if you knew Severus as a boy. Those are nothing."

Petunia considered what she recalled, with descriptions of skin covered with boils or sprouting hair, and shuddered. "But, you said what they are now. They survived?"

"Their bodies did. Their minds were destroyed." Augusta's tone was clipped, but she didn't seem angry, just matter-of-fact. "Neville persists in believing there's something in there to save, but it isn't as though everything hasn't been tried. They've been at St. Mungo's for over fifteen years.."

"Oh." Petunia sat for a moment, processing all this and wondering how on earth that Dumbledore hadn't explained more--a _lot_ more--about what she was taking in, with Harry. Finally, she glanced back at the box, setting innocuously on the table. "So, did you want to try, then? To break the spell."

Augusta reached into her great handbag and got out her wand, nodding. "I shall see what I can do."

Petunia suppressed a shudder at the sight of the wand. "I never even knew it was magic," she said nervously. "I didn't… Vernon would never have allowed me to keep it, so it was hidden, and--"

"And you didn't realize what you had."

"No."

"Pity," Augusta said.

"Why? Do you think it was something that was …needed?"

Augusta shook her head. "That wasn't what I meant," she said. "I merely meant, perhaps you'd have understood more about her, and perhaps you'd have been less angry."

"I'm not angry." Petunia wrapped her arms across her chest, then adjusted the collar of her shirt and stood to increase the thermostat; she was suddenly chilly.

"But you were," Augusta said mildly. "And being angry isn't the most pleasant way to pass the time. No mind, though; you know what you have now, and we're gong to see if we can get a look at it." She waved her wand in a delicate loop and then a florid swish, then pointed it at the box. Her lips compressed into a thin line. "As I thought, a standard revealing charm is no use; I've one more to try, and then we'll need to call in an expert. If you wish, of course." She tried her second charm, and shook her head. "No such luck. Harry might be able to do it, I suppose, with the blood tie, but it feels more like the sort of protection that focuses on intent than on blood."

Petunia sat back down. "So, you want to take it to someone, then? I assume you don't intent to bring various of your kind. Various _wizards_ , I mean. I assume you don't intend to parade them through here, one after another."

"It would be easier," Augusta agreed. "But it is entirely up to you. Recall, I told you when I arrived, this is for the historic record, not for any sort of emergency relief. It isn't the sort of thing that's so critical we'd choose to supersede your wishes."

"Else you would?"

"If it were a matter of the survival of wizardkind?" Augusta smiled. "Of course. As would you, if the reverse were true."

Petunia opened her mouth, but said nothing. She nodded. 

"How would you like to go, then?" Augusta asked.

"What?"

"I assume, given you've kept this box all this time, that you might wish to remain with it, as we paw through and take what we will for the record. Given that--yes?"

Petunia nodded again, ignoring the new shiver that ran through her now, and waited.

"Given that, I could bring you by Apparation--that's something along the lines of disappearing from one place and appearing somewhere else--but that's a bit disconcerting for anyone, and I'd fear we'd lose our grip on the box. I can't shrink it, in its current state. I could call for someone to assist; Harry's a bit preoccupied yet, but I imagine Minerva knows where this place is."

"Minerva?"

"You've likely seen her. She can become a cat."

"A…" Petunia gaped. "Honestly? Can everyone do that?"

"No, it's quite a special skill. Harry tells me his father was able."

"James? Could turn into a cat?"

"Not a cat; I recall it was a wild thing. A boar, perhaps. No, a stag. Yes, I'm sure that's it."

"Oh. Lily never said. Or Severus."

"To my knowledge, neither of them ever learned to transform. In any case, Minerva's a bit busy as well, with the restoration of Hogwarts--it was virtually destroyed, you know."

"I didn't, but I imagine if a battle was fought there, even a magical one--"

" _Especially_ a magical one. A good hex can uproot a tree."

"Oh. Well, then, yes." Petunia thought again about the disarray of the houses and swallowed. "Yes, I imagine that would lead to quite a mess." She sounded a bit faint to her own ears, and she cleared her throat. "All right, you sounded as though there might be a third option. For getting there." She gave a shake laugh. "I'm not sure I'm ready for a cat-person, and the vanishing bit sounds frankly terrifying."

Augusta smiled again, reassuring this time. "Good for you, not just jumping in to prove something. If you've a means of motor transport, we could merely drive into London, to the Ministry, and go from there."

"Oh," Petunia said. "I… Yes, we've a car, but Vernon has it. And he, er."

"Won't want to loan it to a batty old witch with an invisible box, you think?"

"Rather."

Augusta considered, and looked at the clock. "Well, then I think we should have ourselves a nice cup of tea. I can tell you about Harry, at the battle, and we'll wait for him to come in. You can introduce me as the neighbor."

"Oh! The neighbor." Petunia stood. "Perhaps Mrs. Figg--"

"Arabella?"

Petunia decided she should stop being surprised by things Augusta knew. "She has a car."

Augusta stood as well, shrugging on her coat, and picked up the box. "Then I suppose we should go calling," she said. "I haven't seen Arabella in an age."

"She--"

"My first husband, before Frank's father. He died in the fight against Grindelwald, you know; actually, they both did. It was a long war, and I lost twice. In any case, Arabella was his little sister. I should have known Albus would have a task for her. He had a task for everyone." She started toward the door. "Come on, then."

Petunia picked up her coat and gloves and followed Augusta out the door, considering what it would be like to lose two husbands and one's only son to wars and then live to see another. Dreadful, of course, but she didn't know if she'd have survived. She directed Augusta down the street and said nothing; the woman hardly seemed to need her pity.

* * *

"Filius?"

Petunia hung back as Augusta and the quite severe Minerva McGonagall walked before her into a classroom. For one thing, the poltergeist had given her quite a fright as she came in; for another, the entire school--castle--was one disturbance after another. 

Arabella Figg had been willing enough to drive them into London, so that had been all right, but the drive had been strange, with the two witches, or rather, the witch and the Squib, conversing about all manner of things Petunia found odd. She'd been thoroughly disconcerted by the time they arrived, disconcerted and a bit frightened and stubbornly determined not to mention this to anyone because she was certainly just as capable as any of them, and so she'd found herself chasing along after them far too quickly as they went down a ridiculous telephone box and through an utterly impossible hall and into an office full of flying papers and shouting.

Things hadn't got better from there.

First, there had been the dreadful "port key," which, if she were to try to guess, could not be noteworthily easier, as a means of travel, than this Apparation Augusta had described. Then, on landing, she'd turned her ankle quite dreadfully, having failed to quite anticipate that she would literally fall from the sky as she had, and therefore having found herself unable to merely land as the others did. This had led to a bizarre visit to a witch …doctor, only no, that wasn't the right thing to call her, clearly, who had mended a crack to _bone_ in a matter of moments. Then they'd gone past a tree that moved entirely on its own despite that there was virtually no wind, and after that, the staircases had rotated apparently quite according to their own will and whim.

It wasn't as though she'd never heard of these things; she half-remembered the stories that Lily had told their parents, excited, while Petunia flounced to their shared bedroom and pointedly didn't listen. Still, encountering them, one after another and another, all in a row, was exhausting, and by the time they reached their destination, her determination to keep up was flagging badly and she thought she might have gone home, but for that she had no idea how, exactly, she would effect any such thing. She clutched her box against her chest, aware only when she passed an enchanted mirror how strange this looked, and waited outside the door as Minerva and Augusta took themselves on in and called out. 

"A moment," said this Filius, she assumed; there was no one in the classroom, and the call had come from beyond an odd small door at the far end. Thirty seconds later, the door opened and out came a man. A quite tiny man, so small he required a stepstool to reach a height at which Augusta and Minerva could speak to him without stooping. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and he was drying his hands on a towel as he came toward them, which Petunia found oddly comforting and familiar. Once he reached the top of his little stool, he turned toward the door. "Yes?"

Petunia stepped inside and started toward them, and he tilted his head. "You've something special there, then." He looked at the other two women. "I assume she requires assistance?"

Minerva confirmed that she did, and was here by permission, then excused herself to go back to the other tasks on her very long list as Augusta started to explain that she'd been out looking for materials for the display.

Filius waved her aside and jumped down from his platform. He met Petunia halfway and patted a seat at a student desk, encouraging her to sit. Petunia looked to Augusta, whose lips were pressed together in what she thought was suppressed amusement at the dismissal, and sat, lifting the box into the desk before her.

He poked it with a finger, then pulled out his wand and poked it again. "Good work," he said. "Whose?"

"Your wand is so small!" Petunia covered her mouth as soon as she'd said it, but he laughed.

"I can't have the students making dreadful assumptions about overcompensation, now, can I?"

Petunia had no idea how to answer that, so she went back to his question. "My sister," she said.

"Ah. Your sister. I surmise," he said, "that your sister was Muggle-born, as you are entirely Muggle, are you not?"

"You can tell?"

"If you were a Squib, you'd certainly be less discomposed by the magic of this place," he said, "and clearly you're not a witch, for the same reason." He set his hand against the side of the box again. "Miss Evans, then."

"You can _tell_ that?"

"I taught her all the way through her NEWT. I know what her charms-work looked like, and," he said, his expression turning mournful, "her style never had time to mature a great deal, now, did it?"

Petunia recalled the 'newt' was some bizarre magical testing that Lily had talked about, though she didn't know what, exactly, it entailed. "No," she said. "No, and she left this. I'd no idea it was cursed."

"Charmed," he corrected absently. "The term curse implies malicious intent, and this spell is quite loving, isn't it?"

"I …suppose?"

"Yes. Augusta? I assume you weren't able to break the enchantment."

"No, or I'd have left Mrs Dursley in peace."

"Ah, yes. Dursley." Filius glanced at her again, speculatively, but said nothing. 

"Augusta--Mrs Longbottom--said you were a spell-master, and that if I said it was all right, you'd be able to uncur--uncharm it."

He beamed at her when she corrected herself, which was startling and made her feel warm, then nodded. "Yes. It's not impenetrable, I think; for one thing, as I say, she didn't ever have much opportunity to grow past the skills I taught her. But it will require a bit of assistance from you."

"Me? But I'm a hu--a Muggle!"

"Yes," he agreed. "And I'm part Goblin. Quite a pair we make, don't you think?" He scrambled up onto the seat of the desk in front of her, and sat on the desk itself, next to the box. "Put your hands up here, to either side."

"Part …Goblin?" She glanced at Augusta, who had also sat down in another seat across the center aisle. "I didn't know that was possible."

"Quite possible, as you can see, though it's rather watered down, in me. I'm reasonably sure there's something else back in my maternal grandmother's line, to account for the stature issue, but she's tight-lipped about it, and I've never wanted to pry badly enough to offend her." He patted the top of the box. "Hands! I don't think I shall need blood."

"Blood!" She jerked her hands back.

Augusta spoke calmly. "He said he wouldn’t need it, probably, and I can't imagine he wouldn’t ask before taking any. It would be quite rude, amongst wizardkind."

"I think it would be quite rude among _any_ kind."

"As you say," Augusta said. 

Petunia twisted her lips and thought about how long she'd had this box. How it had been left to her and had gone untouched. How it held nothing but memorabilia which, given still more of the half-heard stories she was recollecting again as she thought about it all, they probably could have gotten from her mind, had they wanted to. How it seemed important to them, and important enough they were being quite, well, decent.

How this was the first time she'd gotten to see this place, decades too late and not at all the way Lily had, but it was still more than she'd quite expected.

She put her hands up on the top of the box. "Here?"

He pointed his wand at her left hand, then drew back when she startled. He smiled and set the wand down on the desk and laid one of his hands atop each of hers. "What would help?"

"Not using magic?" she managed, irritated by how jumpy and out of control she felt. Maybe the box itself was bringing back memories, too; she'd not touched it more than to move it since the first time she'd opened it, and as her hands remained on the surface, pressed down slightly by his, she felt the crackle of energy along her skin again. She swallowed. "But that seems impractical, doesn't it?"

"You're under no obligation," Augusta said. "We could take you home."

"No!"

Filius stroked the backs of her hands gently, and Petunia blinked, thinking, incongruously, how the last person to touch her with no demands had been Lily, two days before she'd run off, two days before she'd left the box. She wondered why she'd never thought of that before.

"I know it's ridiculous," she said. "I know you're doing things that seem ordinary, to you. But for me…" She paused, trying to think how to explain this in a way that wouldn't seem petty or nasty or absurd. "For me, magic was always one of two things. Forbidden, or out of control." She looked from Augusta to Filius. "I like for things to be in control. And where I can see them."

He nodded. "And you had, in your home, a child possessed of a strange and wild sort of magic, and you could never see it." He stroked the backs of her hands again, then picked up his wand. "All right, then I shall explain. This wand is merely a focal point, in many ways, and my task is to use that focus to unravel your sister's charm. Yes?"

"I remember how she would swish hers, swish and stab and flick, whispering strange words."

"Excellent, yes. The words are also a focus of a sort; they are the statement of intent. They work in any language, but we teach them primarily in Latin, because the students are unlikely to have unexpected associations with the Latin terms, and therefore are unlikely to lose focus in unpredictable ways."

"I studied some Latin, in school. A long time ago, of course."

"Of course. But it was, I expect, an exercise, rather than a language used to discuss the marketing or your wardrobe or the surly boy next-door."

Petunia glanced up. 

"Harry has told us that much, and my point is that you can see: you have a reaction to that in English."

"Yes."

"But we're off track, I suppose, as I was explaining what I intend to do. First, I need to introduce the wand to the box and to you, and also to the charm as it sits. I will learn, from this, about how, exactly, she tied the structure into itself, that the charm outlived her by so long. I expect it's actually got stronger, over time. Once I see that, and the wand and I know how the knot is tied, we can untie it." He patted her hand one more time and added, "It will just be a touch. No active magic. Like reading, rather than speaking, if you take my point."

She nodded and stretched her hands out firmly on the box top. "Go on, then."

He ran the wand along each of her middle fingers and drew it across the top of the box from side to side, trailing across each wrist as he did. "Ah! I see."

"You see?"

"I see. A moment." He slid down to the floor and jogged lightly to the front of the room, waving his wand before him. "Augusta, if you'd check my arithmetic?"

Petunia watched as rows and columns of crooked hand-writing appeared on the board at the front, with figures and arrows that baffled her. Some of the characters were Greek, she thought, and there were symbols and colored bits. She glanced across at Augusta, who was following the lines intently.

"I don't see anything obviously amiss," Augusta said after a moment. "Though I shall be the first to admit my shackling theory is a bit rusty."

Filius read his own work again and swung his wand through a series of loops, then nodded, apparently satisfied. He turned back. "Excellent. Now, Mrs Dursley, I'll wave my wand and poke it about a bit--don't worry; no stabbing, I think--and whisper strange words, and we shall see what we see." He climbed back up and stood on the seat in front of her again, then looped the tip of the wand around, as he'd done before. She couldn’t make out what, exactly, he was murmuring, but the box heated under her fingers, and then there was a gentle flash. "There we are!"

Petunia looked at the box, which was no longer a dull brown but a rich dark red, and lifted her hands away. "So, I should open it?"

"Of course," Filius said. He seemed quite pleased, though whether it was with her or with himself, Petunia wasn't sure.

She opened the cover and spread the tissue, then started lifting out items. Photographs--some of them the ordinary still kind Petunia saw every day, some of them the mobile ones that danced, like Harry had kept on his bedside table. Papers--rolled parchment essays and flat ordinary paper letters and a handful of thick cards in envelopes. After a few minutes, she looked up. "I don't know how I didn't realize before that the box held more than it should."

"Because you weren't meant to," Augusta said. "She never struck me as the sort of girl who would deliberately remind you."

Petunia nodded. "Is any of this what you need?"

Filius rolled a parchment back up and selected another, then looked up. "She left this with you when she married?"

"Yes, why?"

"These things are from later." He turned the parchment toward her that she might see the date at the top. 

"29 October… That's just before the accident," she said.

"Accident?" Filius lifted an eyebrow.

"I don't know what else to call it, after all this time," she said. "We'd always told Harry it was a car crash--"

"Bit more than a car crash," Augusta chimed in.

"Yes, but Vernon… it wasn't as though…" Petunia sighed. "29 October is just before she died. It's well over two years after she left it."

"And you never noticed?"

"I never looked." She shook her head. "I never looked, so it never occurred to me to realize."

Augusta set a hand on her shoulder. "It's difficult, isn't it, to go back and revisit the things that remind us?"

Petunia nodded. "She probably expected me to realize, though," she said.

"Or hoped for an opportunity to tell you, or hoped to be able to come back for her things," Augusta suggested evenly.

Petunia thought that was probably not the case, but smiled up at her anyway. "Thank you."

Filius gasped. "Augusta…"

"Yes?"

"Much of this is for the display, yes. But this…" He called a fresh scroll to his hand from his desk and murmured something, then handed her the one he'd been holding. "This is for you."

Augusta scanned the contents of the page and put her hand to her mouth. "Indeed," she said quietly. "If you'll excuse me?"

Petunia opened her mouth to ask why, then closed it. It was none of her concern. Was it? She opened her mouth again. "Is it anything I can do?" It felt silly to ask. They could do all manner of things she could only dream of, and clearly didn't need her _help_ , but Augusta glanced at her and held out the paper.

"It's unlikely to make a great deal of sense; it's mostly theory," she said. "But as we'd had no idea there was anything…" She pressed her lips together. "You've already done enough," she said. "I'd forgotten quite what it felt like to hope, regarding this. Filius, will you wait for my message before letting Neville know?"

"Of course."

Augusta left the room in a rush, all but running for the front door, clutching the parchment in her hand.

Petunia looked at Filius, bewildered. "What was anything?"

"Lily had spoken to Alice about some of what Alice was working on, when she was injured. And apparently, she'd made some notes and sent them along to you."

"Injured?" Petunia couldn’t quite pull off the single-brow lift, but knew her tone wasn't so different from his, when he'd called her on naming Lily's death an accident.

"My apologies. I didn't want to frighten you if you didn't know the details." He moved the pile of papers they'd already looked at from the desk, transferring them to the next one forward, and sat down again, unrolling the scroll he still held so they could both see it. "I duplicated it before she went," he said. "Just in case. She was in hiding, by then, but evidently they were in touch."

"I thought no one could reach them? The old man Mr Dumbledore, he explained it, once."

"No one could. However, Alice had had a two-way mirror, and evidently they'd continued to talk."

"A two-way mirror?"

"Something like your Muggle telephone, I believe," Filius explained, "only, the parties can see each other."

"Oh. Like the new video-conferencing."

Filius shrugged. "Perhaps. I wouldn’t know; I fear given my physical limitations, I don't spent much time amongst Muggles. I rarely leave the school at all, come to that. It's difficult enough, even living here, and most of the time, I could do the most good maintaining order and doing research, you see."

"As opposed to?"

"As opposed to working for Albus more directly, as Minerva did. And Severus, and your sister, of course."

"I see." Petunia didn't see at all, as despite everything, with Hestia and with Harry and with the brief note she'd got--and promptly hidden--from the man who had once rearranged her fireplace without so much as a by-your-leave, she wasn't _really_ clear on what, exactly, working for Mr Dumbledore had entailed, but apparently, it had been something about this war and the danger they'd fled, and apparently whatever was in the box was important.

"I remember she'd had a mirror," Filius said.

"But you didn't know--I mean, with a telephone, there are records. Of who rang up whom, and such."

"Oh. Nothing like that, for these, and it makes sense we never found the other half; Lily's must have been shattered, along with everything else."

Petunia pressed her lips together again and tried not to think about Lily and her shattered house and tiny Harry in the wreckage. "Were they at school together? Lily and Alice? I knew Severus, of course, from, well, he lived down the end of the block past ours, just where things got… never mind. And I remember, she used to mention a Helen, but I don't remember an Alice."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't; Alice was a bit older. But, both bearing boys so near together, and both working with Albus so closely as I've gathered they did, it's only natural they'd have had a great deal to talk about."

Petunia nodded again. "My son is the same age, as well." She didn't add, _and I'd have liked to have had someone like that_ , because of course, she had. She took another handful of photographs out of the box and changed the subject. "How is it staying full?"

He shrugged. "A charm, of course. A storage charm." He examined the interior of the box. "And a collection charm, looks like. She must have had a transfer box in her home. That wouldn’t have interfered with the Fidelius…"

"I'm afraid you've lost me," Petunia said.

"Oh, right. I was talking to myself, I suppose. It's clever work, this." He picked up another batch from the box himself. "Oh, and this would be Harry, then."

"Oh!" Petunia glanced at the tot, pulling upright on shaky fat bow legs in a nappy and nothing else, grinning with four teeth at the camera. He'd been running on those fat legs by the time he'd got to her, running and tumbling and getting up to run again, at least until Vernon had cured him of it. Vernon and herself; there was little point in denying her own complicity in the privacy of her own mind. "Yes," she said at last. "Yes, that would be Harry."

* * *

When she returned home, it was late.

She'd left the box behind, once they'd lifted out the last of the pages. Nothing had led to the kind of startled response Filius had had to the scroll about the mirror, but she did note he set aside a few of the pieces from the top layers of Lily's things. Lily's memories, she supposed. It made her face heat to think of herself as the holder of Lily's trust, seventeen years after she'd died, though it wasn't, as she thought she should have expected, a heat of anger or shame; it was more a sort of pride, and that was hard to think about.

Filius had offered to duplicate anything she wanted, and had said it would be no trouble, but on consideration, she'd realized she couldn’t very well bring home images of Lily--or Harry, whose presence in this house was erased as entirely as Vernon had been able to effect--and much of the rest, the lists and spells and notes, those were all but gibberish to her. In the end, she'd declined and said if it would be all right for her to come see, when they'd finished their display, they could keep the lot.

She hadn't looked at any of it in decades, so she'd thought it wouldn’t be any trouble to leave it. It wasn't until she'd stood to walk away that she'd stopped and run her finger over the box top again. Even while they'd been away, it had still been there, and even though she hadn't thought of it in all this time, she'd never given it away before.

Still, her decision was right, and she'd walked away, back to the door of the classroom as Filius sent out some sort of …barely-visible racing creature? running ahead of her to alert Minerva she was ready to go.

She'd rather wished he'd walked her out, as she approached the door. Filius was tiny, but his classroom was large, and the door was larger still, and it was heavy and old, old-fashioned and intimidating. She turned the great metal handle and pushed, surprised when it swung open easily enough. Of course, she supposed they probably had all sorts of magical means to lighten doors and heat the old castle and she didn't know what all else; after all, children lived here, so it couldn’t be as damp and dark as it ought to be, could it?

Someone stepped into her path as she moved through the doorway, someone in worn trainers and ragged denims and a faded home-made jumper. She followed the jumper up and blinked. "Harry!" Her mouth remained open, as though she intended to say more, but she had no idea what, exactly, she might say, so she was silent. After a drawn-out awkward moment, she looked away.

"Hi," he said. "I can get someone else to take you, just, Professor McGonagall said you were here, which…" He paused until she glanced back at him. "I thought they were joking, only I couldn’t really ask that, and I reckoned if they weren't, I should come."

"You should?"

"Should have before, but it's been a bit busy." He scratched the back of his neck. "It's no excuse. After I saw the memories… has anyone actually told you? About how things ended up?"

"Hestia said you had defeated your, what did she say?"

"Evil wizard works. Dark lord. Bad guy."

"Yes, him. And brought us home, and everything was an awful mess, worse than you ever did--"

"Sorry about that."

She shrugged. "And then they helped us clean up, and left us alone. Until today."

"So, you're here because…"

"I had a box. Of things. From Li--your mother."

"You had my mother's things?" His eyes glinted sharply, and she took a step back.

"I forgot. Honestly. I've had it forever, but I'd not looked at it or touched it since before you were born. And then Augusta arrived."

"Augusta Longbottom. Neville's Gran. Came to Privet Drive." Harry's lip quirked, and Petunia realized he was suppressing a laugh. "I can't quite imagine her in the sitting room. She's a bit scary."

"She was perfectly nice," Petunia said, inexplicably possessed of the urge to defend her new friend. Friends. "As was your Mr Flitwit."

"Flitwick," he corrected. "Anyway. I said I'd take you home, unless you'd rather not. I mean, I know where, and I thought probably I should tell you, sometime, about the whole last crazy night--Hermione says I owe you that, and she's entirely right, which she always is--and I mean, probably not now, I guess, because it's late and if I remember, the first day at Hogwarts is a little overwhelming, if you've not grown up with this sort of thing."

She nodded. "There was a port key, and the steps turned. And I learned that if one landed badly on one's ankle, it could be fixed with a spell. I don't know what kind. Not a curse, he said." She pointed back over her shoulder with her thumb half-heartedly, the general overstimulation of the day catching up with her. She swayed, gasping when he caught her with both hands on her upper arms.

"Oi, no fainting. Come on."

"You're going to do that vanishing thing, aren't you?"

"Unless you want me to fly you. Which would take a while."

"Fly… no."

"Exactly. But I'm crap at bone charms, so if you broke your ankle again, I wouldn’t be good at fixing it, and I'm good at Apparating. Lots of practice, this last year."

She nodded. "All right, then."

"Good." He turned and pointed toward the stairs. "We have to get off the grounds--well, no, some of the charms fell, but they did get them back up on the castle itself, but the rest of the grounds, we can, now."

Petunia frowned. "What?"

"Sorry. That wasn't very clear, was it? Usually, it isn't possible to Apparate into or out of the grounds of Hogwarts, for security reasons. Just like, uh, you couldn’t just show up in the dormitories at ten at night at Smeltings, right?"

"Oh, of course."

"So, yeah, during the battle a lot of the charms on the castle fell, but some of them are back up, and when they put them up--when _we_ did, really--we mostly concentrated on the structure itself first. The rest of the grounds, less so. We're still working on it. So. Outside, to Apparate."

Petunia nodded and followed him to the staircase, waiting until it stilled before she stepped gingerly onto it.

"Honestly, Potter, you might hold them for her," said a voice over her head.

Harry looked up. "Snape. As you may know, the stair-stilling charm isn't on the standard curriculum, and I haven't needed it, myself. But they usually behave fairly well for me. Most of the time."

Petunia watched the older face of the boy she'd once known speak from the frame of a rather old-looking oil painting, and her nephew answering as though this were a normal conversation, and that was it. She felt her eyes rolling back and clutched at Harry's sleeve. As her knees buckled, she felt him catch her once again and heard him say, "I think you freaked her out, Snape. Was that strictly necessary?"

She thought it just as well that when she came around a few minutes later, she was on the lawn in the night air, alone with Harry and no unnaturally tiny men and no port keys and no bizarre painted childhood neighbors.

Harry considered her for a moment and stepped closer. "You'll want to hold on," he said. "I could carry you, if you don't think you can."

She straightened and lifted her chin. "I can."

"Cool." He took one hand and set the other on her waist and grinned. "Pretend it's a dance. I'm leading. Only, I'm a crap dancer, so that won't be the same."

Petunia set her free hand on his shoulder automatically, lessons from decades before automatically clicking into place to put her in position.

And then, just like that, with an odd sensation of popping into and out of herself, Petunia was in her own back garden. "Perhaps I should have clicked my heels," she said, stumbling slightly over her own feet as he let go of her.

Harry grinned. "Perhaps. Look, like I said, we should talk, some time, about Snape and my mother and, well, a lot of other things, but probably not tonight. But, uh, look." He pulled a coin from his pocket and pointed his wand--she hadn't noticed he had it, though of course, _of course_ , he did, because he was a wizard, and why did that feel less strange than it once had?--and said another of the gibberish phrases she'd heard too many of today, then handed it to her. "This will call me. If you need me." He stepped back, his grin fading, and added, "I don't really think you will. Need me. I mean, you're safe now, right? You are from the standpoint of things that were dangerous because of me, in any case. And I know you didn't ever want to keep me, but just, everything is supposed to be fine now and you're supposed to be safe, but just in case."

"It will call you?"

"Yeah. Hermione taught me, and she made one for her parents when she went to get them, and it works, and they're even less magic--uh, anyway. You close it in your fist, like this," he said, holding out his hand palm-up, then closing it tight, "and say my name. All you have to do, and I'll know. Um, and just, so you know, if I'm not here straight away, it's because I'm doing something fairly urgent, all right?"

"In a fist?"

"In a fist. Uh, you might want to not show Vernon. I sort of think he might have a hernia or an aneurysm or something."

She nodded and stepped back one more step, onto the stone patio behind the house. Harry vanished, and she turned to go in.

"And where the ruddy hell have _you_ been?" Vernon asked as she entered the kitchen. He was only a few feet from the door, and had clearly been looking out. "Sneaking in the back door at half-ten on a Tuesday night, dancing with some boy in the garden _I pay for_."

"It wasn't _some boy_ ," Petunia began, before realizing she couldn’t actually explain it had been Harry. He'd been right; Vernon looked all but ready to have an aneurysm right now, and that was without knowing there'd been witches on the property again. She straightened. "It was a friend, who had the decency to see me home when I was out later than I'd intended."

"Out where?" he demanded, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "And if you're paying _my money_ to some, some _gigolo_ \--"

"What?" Petunia crossed her arms over her chest. "I am _not_ paying anyone money for _that_ , not that it would be your business at this point if I were, and--oh!" She staggered back as his open hand hit her cheek, and a moment later her spine came in contact with the counter. "Vernon!"

"You weren't here to prepare supper, so the boy and I had to have sandwiches, and then you waltz in here all flushed from God only knows what sort of debauchery--"

Petunia stared. "I didn't waltz," she said deliberately. "I walked." She was far enough away now that she'd see him coming if he decided to come at her again; this was hardly the first time she'd seen him furious. He'd never actually struck her while Hestia was with them, which, it occurred to her now was because Hestia would probably have charmed--no, _hexed_ \--his bits to shriveled, or possibly scorched, remains. She wondered whether the fact she was angry, rather than making an effort to do what would please him, was because of the events of the day, or whether she'd changed more than she knew in their year away. Maybe it was both. She took a breath, and went on. "And as I said, I was out later than I'd intended. My friend saw me home, that I would arrive safely."

He didn't strike her again. She'd expected that he might, and was ready to step aside, or try, but instead he approached slowly, his face contorted with rage. "Out. You were _out_. No word, no supper, and no ruddy excuse." He was very close before she realized she hadn't been prepared after all, that his purple face and throbbing veins were as much a danger sign as she had always known, despite that he was moving slowly. His meaty hand shot forward and clamped between her legs, hard, painful, and she tightened her hand around the coin she hadn't even had time to put away. "And if you're so desperate all of a sudden, after all this time, you'll spread your legs for--"

"Harry."

His grip tightened, bruising her, and his other hand caught her arm as he leaned over her, forcing her backward over the sink. " _Harry?_ "

She hadn't meant for him to draw the conclusion to which he'd obviously leapt, and she shook her head, frantic. "No, that was, I meant to say, it's wasn't a comment on…" She looked past him toward the living room, where Dudley, oblivious, continued to stare at the telly and shovel handfuls of popcorn into his mouth. 

"You're spreading your legs for _Harry?_ I married you despite that _freak_ of a sister, and you--ook." He dropped away from her, landing with a whump on the floor as the air around them whirled. His face went slack, but he was breathing, and the color started to recede from the throbbing veins of his face.

Petunia gasped and clutched at her arm, staring at Harry as his hair fluttered in the remaining breeze. "That was …fast."

"Sooner than I hoped, yes. Also, what the hell was he on about?"

"He saw you. Not _you_ , but a young man. He decided…" Petunia looked away, her eyes brimming with hot tears. "And then I said your name, because of," she held out the coin. "And--"

Harry pulled a face she could hear in his voice. "No offense, but, um, _ew._ Are you all right?"

"Of course." She straightened, wincing.

"You are not. Has he always been this big a prick? Wait, no, don't answer that. Shit." Harry looked over his shoulder. "Oi, Dudley."

Dudley looked up and froze, popcorn dropping from his fingers. "Harry! But…" He stood, laboriously, and lumbered in to the kitchen. "Daddy! What did you do to him, you--"

"Dudley." Petunia shuffled sideways in order to move away from Vernon, who was drooling on the floor, and toward Harry, nodding something that was intended to be a sort of thanks.

Dudley looked back and forth from one of them to the other, and Petunia tried not to notice how his small close-set eyes were so like his father's. It had always annoyed her that Harry had inherited Lily's eyes. 

"Big D, your father is a slimeball who was in here assaulting your mother while you stared at the telly in the next room," Harry said bluntly. 

"He wouldn't do that! What do you mean, assault?"

"What you're thinking, and, God, Dud, you know he's capable."

Dudley looked sharply at Petunia, who looked away, and set his popcorn bowl down on the table. "Uh. Well then, what did _she_ do to deserve it?"

Petunia sighed and tried to think of how to answer that, but Harry was quicker. "Nothing, since that's impossible, you lump of… Look. Even if she did something, there's no excuse, which I know he never taught you but I'm telling you now. And anyway, there was nothing. It was rather like when I came home with you, chilled from the Dementor." Dudley flinched. "There were assumptions. And you know how that worked out."

"She was out with Dementors?"

Harry's brow wrinkled. "Uh, no. In any case, Aunt Petunia, I assume you wanted, what, to go somewhere else?"

Petunia bit her lip. "I don't really know where I'd go," she began.

"Go?" Dudley said. "What d'you mean, _go_? Who will take care of me?"

Harry ignored him. "You could probably come stay with us. At the Burrow. Uh, but you'd have to tolerate the fact that there are currently six wizards, three witches, and an injured dragon."

" _Dragon_?"

"Not in the house or anything." Harry shrugged. "We got it hurt, so it was only fair we do the rehab. Though Charlie says it'll be ready to go to Romania for the rest any time now."

"Oh." Petunia shook her head. "I don't think I'm quite prepared for dragons, just yet."

"We could call and report what he was doing to you," Harry said, nudging Vernon with his foot. 

Petunia was seized with the urge to suggest he kick rather than nudge--actually, thought she might quite like to kick him, herself--but refrained from saying so. "They'd want me to visit the hospital, make a record…"

Harry nodded. "Probably a bit much, after the rest of the day."

Dudley pulled out a chair at the table and sank into it, watching them talk, looking as though perhaps the conversation was no less odd to him than if he'd stumbled upon a giraffe and a penguin discussing metallurgy. It occurred to Petunia that perhaps it _was_ odd, but she dismissed the thought and tried to work out where, exactly, she might go. Vernon groaned, and she stepped further away from him. "Can you just, is there a way to make him not do that?"

Harry shrugged. "If disabling rapists were magically possible, I imagine we'd have entered into an agreement with the Muggle government about rehabilitating sociopaths." He paused. "I could make him forget _this_ situation, though. I think. I haven't done very many memory charms."

Vernon groaned again and put his hand to his forehead, and Harry glanced at Petunia. She nodded.

"All right, let me just go over…" Harry scrunched up his forehead for a moment, then pointed his wand. " _Obliviate_!"

Vernon's hand went slack and dropped to the tile again, and then he opened his eyes and blinked several times. 

"He'll be stupid for a few minutes," Harry said. "You'll want to tell him he slipped or some such, to explain what he's doing on the floor. And why he has a bump in his head; I wasn't all that gentle, when I first came in, though I can try to fix that a little." He focused again and sent a weak repairing charm. "I didn't really fix the bump, only made it enough less he wouldn’t end up at the hospital. A throbbing headache seems it would be fine."

"Hang on! You can't just _remove his memory_! It's just… it's awful! You've never done that to me, have you?" Dudley said, finally catching on and lunging to his feet. Harry moved toward the door and met Petunia's eyes, and she nodded slightly.

"Of course we can't," she said as Harry lifted his wand again.

The charm didn't knock Dudley down, but it did leave him staring vacantly into space, and Harry went quickly to the door. "All right, then?"

She nodded.

"You have the coin, still?"

"Will it work again?"

"Yes." Harry pressed his lips together, then added, "Uh, don't wait till it's that urgent, yeah? If I'd been in the middle of something… Just be careful. I can't guarantee he won't remember any of it, and I don't think waiting here to find out if he's still enraged would help much."

"Probably not," Petunia agreed.

Harry went out into the garden and vanished, leaving Petunia to direct Dudley in helping her get Daddy to his feet.

It wasn't until later that it occurred to her to wonder whether the memory charm was, indeed, a charm, or whether it was more of a hex. She lay awake a long time, once she got to bed, thinking about what to do. Today--yesterday, by now--had changed everything.

* * *

_Dear Petunia,_

_I hope you will forgive the familiarity, for while we did spend a very pleasant afternoon together, I don't know that you expected us to become close and I do realize it's been several weeks since we last spoke. However, I wanted to let you know the outcome of our study of the parchment in your box, and given how the research has progressed, I confess I've come to classify you as a friend._

_In any case, I do hope you'll consent to a visit, perhaps for tea on Thursday next? I can simply tell you, but I thought perhaps you might like to see what has happened because you chose to give us things we didn't even know you had._

_Young Harry has explained to me that I might reach you in care of Arabella Figg, and has explained something of why, though I hasten to add, he wasn't terribly specific. I do hope you are well, and that you'll agree to come._

_Warmly,  
Augusta Longbottom._

_P.S. I nearly forgot. Harry helped me to post this in the Muggle way, and said you could send your reply to the Grangers; theirs is the address that isn't yours, on the envelope. I found the system somewhat odd, but I imagine the reverse would be true, as well._

 

Petunia considered the letter all afternoon, leaving it on the counter as she peeled the potatoes. 

The morning after that day, she'd at last given up on sleep and risen before dawn, drinking cup after cup of strong tea until it was time to cook Vernon's breakfast. She'd woken him without incident and seen no trace of upset in him. He hadn't even been particularly stiff from where he'd hit the floor, though she'd seen the hint of a bruise in front of his ear.

He'd left for work precisely on schedule, and she'd gone to wake Dudley, who got up and went to the door to let out the cat, and then munched his way through half a loaf of toasted bread and four eggs before he said a word. Finally, he'd washed it down with an enormous glass of juice, and then he leaned back and crossed his arms. "I dreamed of Harry," he said.

Petunia dropped the plate with her own egg (over-easy) and two wedges of buttered toast. Fortunately, she'd only just picked it up, and it only clattered but didn't spill. She straightened her shoulders and picked it up again. "Oh?"

"I dreamed he was here, helping you."

"How odd." She brought her plate to the table and sat down.

"I thought so." He said nothing else, watching her eat. 

"Well, dreams are difficult to explain, sometimes. I didn't sleep well, myself."

Dudley got up and got a second glass of juice. "In the dream, he was here because Dad was hurting you."

Petunia blinked, but Vernon had been hurting her--sometimes, not often, not badly, not so much--Dudley's whole life, so that he'd happened to notice now was certainly not coincidence. "And…" She swallowed and started again. "And, was he hurting you, too?"

"No," Dudley said. He paused. "I don't think it was a dream."

"Oh?"

"No." He drank the juice. "Look. I don't know… You remember, Harry saved me once."

Petunia nodded, pushing away what was left of her food.

"And the witch Hestia, she said he saved a lot of people. And I. I think he was here, last night, saving you too, and if he was," Dudley took a breath, rushing on, looking at the floor, clearly uncomfortable. "Is he coming back?"

"He isn't going to hurt you."

"No, I know. Last night I was upset. I didn't mean I thought he was doing anything. He could have, lots of times. He had the chance. That wasn't what I meant."

Petunia relaxed slightly and picked up her plate, taking it to the sink, scraping the remains into the rubbish. "I don't know," she said at last, looking down at the cloth and soap she had in her hands for washing up.

Dudley waited a moment, then said, "If you see him again, tell him thanks?"

Petunia looked up. "For what?"

He started toward the sitting room, picking up the newspaper as he shrugged and said, "You know. Things."

Petunia watched him go, then went back to scrubbing dried egg off the flatware. She wasn't sure how many more bizarre conversations she could take.

After the washing, she cleaned the counters, which were, now that she looked, smudged and dripped-upon from Vernon's sandwich adventure of the night before, then dried everything and put the dishes away. Once she'd put the last plate in the cupboard and hung up the towel, it was time to start the… She looked at the calendar, staring for a long time, then went looking for the newspaper. She didn't know what day it was, couldn’t say even which week. She was reasonably sure October was right, at least.

It took her a moment to find the paper; it was folded in half and set neatly on the coffee table. She looked at it there, wondering if she had somehow already been in here to clear up after Dudley, but she knew she hadn't. She hadn't, in fact, even seen the picture on the front page of the newspaper.

9 October, it told her. Friday. Friday, and tomorrow Vernon would be home all day. She shuddered. How had she ever tolerated this feeling?

Friday, right. She needed to do the marketing, then, for a Friday night roast because in the months they'd been back they'd tried to be consistent about that sort of thing, now Vernon was back to a regular work schedule. She went back into the kitchen and looked about for a paper and pen, and thought about how careful Hestia and her friends had been to put them back into the life they'd had. They must have erased memories, like Harry had. They must have forged documents, for Vernon's job to just come available again without any difficulty. They must have put everything back just as it had been, only somehow they'd broken _her_.

That was it, wasn't it? She was what was different?

There was still a pen in her hand, and she wondered what she'd got it out for. Oh, right. Friday, and marketing.

She put the pen and paper on the counter and went upstairs to have a bit of a nap. There was nothing wrong with a nap, and she'd feel better. She was surprised to find herself in the bath, instead. 

Her dress was wrinkled, which was no surprise, given she'd been up for hours. She stripped it off and looked away from herself in the mirror over the sink, as she always did. Her body was pale and thin, her breasts flat and uninspiring, her skin dry, and there was nothing to be gained by looking at any of it. She'd never got prettier by trying, and she restricted looking in the mirror to applying lipstick and blotting her nose.

She crossed to the tub and turned on the spray, hot, then frowned and deliberately looked in the mirror. The spread of oblong bruises on her arm, livid and clearly made by hurtful fingers, made her gasp, even though she knew they were there, and before she let herself consider the issue she looked about for something to stand on. The rubbish bin was empty; she'd cleared it out on Thursday morning, of course, and she overturned it and stepped up to see the other bruise.

It was difficult to see well, but her skin _was_ pale, and while she'd never spent any undue time examining the area, certainly not with a mirror, she was certain the flesh under her pubic hair wasn't supposed to be dark and blue-tinged. 

She scrambled up onto the vanity and looked more closely, turning her legs out to see the fingerprints there, too, until the mirror steamed over from the running shower. Shaking, she got down, careful not to fall, and got in the shower.

When the hot water ran low, she turned off the spray and stood there for another moment, hair dripping onto her shoulders, looking down her arm once more. The odd light of an autumn morning, filtered through the curtains on the window and around the tub, made them brown on skin pink from the heat.

She wrapped a towel around her self and, for the first time since she was a teenager, crossed to the bedroom without getting dressed first, then slept bare-skinned for four hours, waking with creases on her face and her hair a hopeless tangled knot.

By the time she'd pulled on pedal-pushers and a warm jumper and got a comb through her hair, she knew she had to go. Away. Away from Vernon. It didn't matter what else was all the same as it had been before their year away. It mattered only that she was not.

She went to the market, carefully gathering materials for a week of sandwiches and fruit along with noodles to make a lasagna and a roast for tomorrow, and went home without noticing so much as the weather. She tried to keep her focus ahead, and as it was clear that it was already halfway through Friday, wouldn’t have time to pack that day. The week-end was also out of the question, as Vernon tended to remain at home, or to be in and out sporadically, and that meant Petunia had to get to Monday before she could do anything.

Monday came and went, and at half six she found herself putting a casserole on the table, and she sat and ate mechanically, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. Something, clearly. She glanced at Dudley, across the table, and found him watching her, but neither of them said anything. Vernon, deep in a story about the relative merits of six- versus five-point tiles, didn't notice anything was wrong, and kept talking until his food was cold.

She reheated it automatically in the microwave oven, wishing she could simply poke a stick at it and chant _reheatio_ and watch the steam rise.

She hadn't wished for that in over twenty-five years.

This wasn't going to get better.

On Tuesday, she did the laundry and took another hot shower in the middle of the day, looking for a long while at the bruises that were brown and yellow now, fading into her colorless skin. She'd wondered whether the urge to leave would fade with them, but it wasn't; it was growing. She put away the laundry and made an auxiliary marketing trip because Friday, she'd failed to purchase anything like what she'd need for ordinary suppers all week. She stocked the refrigerator with sandwich materials again and cooked a shepherd's pie.

At eleven o'clock Thursday morning, after Dudley had gone off to see about a job keeping out the unsavory down the pub, she filled three boxes and piled them with a suitcase on her bed and fished Harry's coin out of her purse. She sat down on the side of the bed and turned it over in her hand half a dozen times, distracting herself examining the scraped edge and the grit limning the edges on both sides, then finally, with a deep breath, closed her fingers around it and squeezed her eyes shut before she called him. He was there in twenty minutes, shortly before noon, appearing in the sitting room and calling up the stairs. She shouted to come up--her voice sounded absurdly loud--and remained where she was.

He listened to her explain for far longer than it should have taken to simply say the previous Friday had been the last straw, and didn't interrupt, then asked her whether she wanted him to simply remove the memory of Friday's events. It was tempting, but the notion made her shudder as much as it thrilled her, the thought of going back to being satisfied with her life. Still, she shook her head, and he nodded, very seriously, and asked her where she wanted to go, and whether she thought, at this point, that this was a permanent or a temporary move.

She wasn't sure where she was going, only that she was, and it wasn't until he made the suggestion that she took it, aware that it would allow her to be near enough Dudley could see her if he chose. Not that she would tell him right away, not until after Vernon was finished being furious; what he didn't know, he couldn’t tell, and Vernon had never taken out his rage on Dudley, who was probably big enough to flatten him if he tried anyway. She left him a note, just like the one she left Vernon, then watched as Harry grinned and charmed Dudley's to show him she was all right. She smiled; charms, it turned out, were handy things.

She picked up the little cat and together, they went-- _Apparated_ \--directly into Arabella's house, for which Petunia apologized profusely while Harry explained, reinforced the protections on the house, and unshrunk her things. She'd forgotten about shrinking charms. Half an hour later, he'd had four cups of Arabella's tea and Petunia had started a casserole because having nothing to do with her hands, given the events of the day and the week, had proved an impossible strain. When she put supper on the table at seven, that was the start of the pattern. 

She finished slicing the potatoes into the soup stock now and looked at Augusta's letter one more time, then wiped her hands and located a pen.

_Dear Augusta,_

_Yes, I would like to come to tea. Someone will have to fetch me, as I've no idea how to get there on my own. Thursday would be fine._

_Petunia_

She looked at the note for a moment, feeling it was far too short but uncertain what else to say, then sealed it up and copied out the address.

* * *

Petunia looked about the garden nervously. The return letter had indicated someone would be there to fetch her, though it hadn't said who, and had said she might wait on the back patio, to meet him. She'd been there for five minutes, but then, she'd come out three minutes early, after re-sweeping up the cat-food that the six (six!) cats knocked about everywhere and re-wiping the countertop and generally re-doing everything because nerves had made her jumpy.

She wiped her hands on her skirt again, then gasped and put her hand to her chest when a young man popped into existence just a few feet away. "Oh!"

He grinned. "Good, I got it right. I mean, you look like the picture."

"Picture?"

"From the box."

"Oh." Petunia waited for him to introduce himself, but he didn't, so she put out her hand. "You may call me Mrs Dursley."

"Oh! Sorry. I'm Neville."

"Neville… Augusta's grandson?"

"And Harry's friend. Same year, same house, so we've been in loads of classes together. Us and Hermione and Ron…" Neville trailed off, then reached forward and shook her hand. "Uh, hope it's okay it's me."

She frowned. "Shouldn't it be?"

He blushed and ducked his head slightly. "I'm not a very good wizard. I mean, I'm better, and last year I did a lot and everything, but sometimes people don't trust me with things."

Petunia lifted her eyebrows. "Well, can you do it?"

"I wouldn't be here if Harry didn't trust me with it, so, yes. Just, I didn't know if he'd ever mentioned me or anything."

"He didn't speak of school very much," Petunia said after an awkward pause, during which she tried to think if there was a good way to explain that she and Vernon had effectively forbidden it.

The boy nodded. "It must be odd, to have a wizard come home, holidays, when the household is, uh, not."

"Right, exactly so," Petunia said, her shoulders dropping in relief that it hadn't seemed odd. "So, you are to take me, then?"

"Yeah, if you're ready?"

He held out a hand again, almost as though to shake hers again.

"Harry brought me like dancing," she said, lifting her hands as though into position for a waltz.

"I'm a crap dancer," he said.

She laughed, startling herself when the sound bubbled forth. "You're alike, you and he. He said the same thing."

He blushed. "Right, well, so dancing, then." He stepped closer and put up both hands.

She stumbled on landing again, on another, much larger and more comprehensively manicured, garden, and wondered if that was always going to happen, but he steadied her and directed her toward a pair of French doors. "Gran has tea in the sitting room," he said.

She started toward the door and looked back at him. "Aren't you coming?"

He shook his head. "I've got to get back to the school. I've pollinations to oversee."

"You're a gardener?" Petunia was surprised. "That's… It surprises me. I'd think you'd just wave your wand and there! Flowers!" She waved her hand in a squiggle and swirl.

Neville shrugged. "I liked plants, and I'm helping out. And they take more than that. I mean, some don't. Some are weeds. But the good ones, they take more than magic." He smiled shyly. "Love beats magic, you know. Right? Anyway. Not sure what I'll do in the long run, but for now, uh. Last year was rough at the school, what with the Carrows and all the Death Eaters and everything." He touched a divot in the skin above his left temple. "I didn't wind up so badly scarred, but taking a year to just talk to the flowers, as Professor Sprout said, that felt like a good idea to me. I mean, I'll come stay at home if the research pans out and they need me, but I'm trying to not think about it too hard."

"The research?"

"For my parents. Because of the… I think Gran was going to tell you about it, though, and she knows more what they've got going." He nodded again and stepped back. "Anyway. Maybe I'll see you again, then, sometime." And with that, he vanished.

Petunia considered for a moment, wondering why the school had had the Death Eaters Hestia had told them about and who the Carrows were, then turned and slowly made her way across the artfully-uneven stones of the patio to the door. "Hello?"

"Ah, Petunia." Augusta looked up from a paper at her desk, laying down an old-fashioned quill and waving her hand over the whole surface to fold away her work. "Here safely, I see." She stood and held out a hand to guide Petunia across to the settee, then settled in the chair as well. Petunia tried not to gape at what must be her usual costume; on their previous meeting, she'd clearly been quite dressed down. Today, she wore layered robes that were both formal and brightly colorful, and which looked like no regular clothes Petunia had ever seen, even on the telly for the glamorous American film award shows and such.

She accepted a cup with sugar and swallowed a sip. "Your grandson seems like a nice boy," she said.

"He is. He worries too much, but he's finally growing into himself, I think. Though, I must admit, when he was a boy, I wasn't sure he ever would."

"He said he was working with plants now."

Augusta smiled. "Not the career I'd have chosen for him, but then, when I said as much to him, he stood his ground. I suppose, if he won't be an Auror like his father, then being the man he wants to be, over my objection, is certainly something."

"He says it's just for now."

"Oh, I know. But I also know he's wanted this sort of life. He's always talked about the classes with quieter magic and more straightforward rhythms. Herbology. Magical Creatures, when they discussed the ones that aren't dangerous, which really is a different topic entirely." She shrugged. "He also quite likes to cook."

"Harry used to cook for us," Petunia said. "Of course, that was his job; I don't know that he especially _liked_ it. It's not exactly the same. Probably not, if he's training to be an Auror himself now. The Aurors are the ones that are like the police, right? Both your son and his wife were, I understand?"

"For a time. And then Alice left the department, when she was pregnant."

Petunia thought that seemed sensible. "I imagine being cursed at? Or hexed. I'm not clear on the distinction. Either way, it probably is no place for a woman carrying a child."

"Just cursed. Cursed at is along the lines of having someone wish unfortunate circumstances on your family with rude words, and while I suppose, if someone both cursed you and cursed _at_ you simultaneously, it might magnify the damage, a simple 'damn you' doesn't tend to have a particularly detrimental effect." Augusta refilled her own cup and offered Petunia more, but Petunia was still sipping, and shook her head.

"But your letter said there were things you wanted to tell me," she said, "about that parchment, and Neville seemed to think it was about his parents."

"It is. I wonder, has Arabella told you about them? Or did you know, before?"

"We've mostly not discussed much, except when I ask," Petunia said. "Though she did talk some about Death Eaters, and when things have come up…" She set her cup aside and said, "Honestly, I've always rather avoided news of your world. First, when I was young, I thought…" She sighed. "I thought it unfair, really, that Lily should get to be special. And then, when I was a teen-ager, I convinced myself it made her wicked, and Vernon, well, he thought the same, when my parents and Lily explained it."

"And unlearning all that takes time," Augusta observed. "You'll be pleased to learn there are no few wizards whose opinion of your sister was low for reasons not so dissimilar. 

"Why would I be pleased?"

"Perhaps not, but what I meant was, it would be familiar. Bigotry isn't solely the province of Muggles."

"I suppose not. Though I hadn't much thought of it as bigotry, for most of my life."

"No, that's usually the way." Augusta paused. "Well, let me tell you, then, about my son and your sister."

The way she'd said it felt odd, as though they were a pair, and Petunia stared for a moment. "They weren't …together, were they?"

"Heavens, no," Augusta said with a laugh. "Frank loved Alice, and I doubt anyone, even anyone so marvelous as Frank, could have turned Lily from James. I merely meant, their fates got intertwined--the four of them--and those are the two that were so much of you and me."

"Ah. Right."

"To begin with, I have to tell you about the Prophecy. I assume you don't know about that, either?"

Petunia listened for several minutes, eventually picking her cup back up and then refilling it, as Augusta explained, about the birthday and the prediction, about why Lily had gone into hiding--the reality of the betrayal and the events of that Halloween were much more horrifying than Petunia had ever allowed herself to consider, even when Mr Dumbledore had told her they had died--and about why then, even once the dark lord had been vanquished, that first time, some of his followers had come to torture Frank and Alice, to learn from them where he'd gone.

Which, it turned out, they hadn't known, and hadn't been able to tell.

When she came to a stopping point, Augusta set down her cup and calmly poured more tea, then pulled a book from under the table. "I've pictures," she said. "I'd like if you'd look." She held out the book.

"Of how they are now?" Petunia asked, hesitant.

"Only a few," Augusta said. "Mostly, these are from before, kept here so Neville might see them any time, when he was small. And then a couple, when he was a child, that he wouldn’t be so shocked on seeing them in person. And one from last week, as we were starting to prepare to apply the research."

Petunia took the book as Augusta spoke, opening to a cheerful first page with smiling, waving young parents and a fat toddler in whom she could see the beginning of the boy who had brought her here. As Augusta finished speaking, she looked up sharply. "You've tried it? What was it?"

Augusta gestured at the book. "Not yet. But we're going to. First, you should see. I want you to understand, honestly."

Petunia flipped page after page of young Neville and his parents, then came to a blank page. She looked up again, and Augusta nodded. "It's so it's not so shocking, though I'm sure by the time he was five Neville knew where the change was."

Petunia turned over one more leaf, and gasped, putting her fingers to her lips. First was a picture in which both of them were still and bandaged, chests barely rising and falling. Petunia was surprised to realize she had come to expect movement and vivacity in the photographs, and that this one, which might almost have been the sort of photo on her on mantel, felt inadequate and dead. She flipped another page to see the same pair sitting up in wooden chairs, blankets tucked over their laps, heads held up with pillows. On the next page they were reclining in bed, staring vacantly toward the camera. After a moment, the man--Frank--turned away and looked at the ceiling instead.

It didn't much change the effect of the image.

"The last one is next," Augusta said. "I wanted you to see."

Petunia obediently pulled the page up and looked. It was a photograph of Alice only, reaching toward the camera, eyes still dull. As Petunia watched, a scrap of paper fell from her hand, and then she sat back. The same scene played twice more before she looked up. "And that's relevant?"

"We never thought so. Neville's been saving those wrappers since he was very small; they were all he had of her, except what there was here at home. But they never meant anything; they were sweet wrappers, no pattern, no rhyme nor reason. She'd never even liked Droobles, nor any other sort of sweet, before she went to hospital, so we assumed it was only that someone gave her something, and then she passed it on just the same."

"And now you think differently," Petunia guessed.

"The parchment you had included a fairly complex equation. I don't know whether you saw?"

"I did, but Filius didn't say what it meant."

"It was a variant on the process of pulling memory into a Pensieve."

"A Pen-sieve?" Petunia felt quite sure the odd word was a name or a title, and apparently it was something to do with memory, but she had no sense of what that might be.

"She'd evidently been speaking with Severus, in the weeks before Lily and James were betrayed, and they'd been discussing how to do it, wandlessly and without it being seen, for instance if an Auror were to find himself needing to relay his findings but wasn't going to be able to get out alive. He'd concluded it was impossible, and left the topic, though I'm given to understand from Harry he must have taken it back up, more recently."

Petunia frowned. "All right, but I fear I don't understand what any of that means."

"Of course. Allow me to demonstrate." Augusta stood and went to a cabinet, retrieving a shallow stone sort of goblet, then pushed aside the tea service and set it on the end of the table. "Watch." She pulled her wand from a narrow pocket on her outermost robe and put it to her brow, then moved it slowly to the goblet. Petunia couldn’t quite _see_ the trailing …something, but she saw the goblet fill even though there was nothing in it. It was as though the air in the hollow had gone shimmeringly opaque. Augusta stirred, and the opacity bubbled into a shape. Two shapes. And they moved and spoke. 

Petunia squinted, but nothing she did made the image more clear; however, the words came though well enough, if somewhat tinnily. 

_"Were you able to find it?"_

_"Yes, of course."_

_"Ah. Charmed, then."_

_"What?"_

_"I can't see it." … "It's a hell of a charm. Because I know you're holding it, I can nearly see the outline, but I'm no slouch, and I can't make out the details at all."_

_"Really?"_

_"May I?"_

_"Will that help you to see it, then?"_

_"No, my dear. But it might allow me to break the charm without breaking the object." … "Ah. Quite proficient, your sister was."_

_"So I was told."_

Petunia gasped. "That's …us. Talking."

"Exactly so." Augusta stopped what Petunia decided to think of as the playback, for lack of a better term, and returned the wand to her head. "This is a Pensieve--the word is from pensee, for thought, and sieve, for sifting--and those were memories. Wizards can literally jump into the stream and experience the memory as though they were present, but I think Muggles cannot. Still, you evidently got the sense of it."

"And you think the letter was about how to do this without the pulling and stirring?"

"Yes. I was still working, then, myself, for MLE. Magical Law Enforcement, in records, officially, though often I was altering records. It meant I wasn't home, to know they'd spoken, and while I was aware they had previously spoken a great deal, I hadn't realized it continued. Anyway, it did, and Alice always was good at Arithmancy. That's the theory and charm-building branch; you saw a bit, in Filius's classroom. So the notes, they were about a theory. A sound one. The question was, whether the effort, if indeed it was done correctly and the theory held, was as fruitful as the indications on the page, and whether she refined further, after the notes. She must have done, but even so, the theory may have been enough. And Severus reports it's better than he did, bleeding out his memory to Harry as he died."

Petunia grimaced. "Bleeding memory? That sounds quite dreadful."

"Sorry; I forget sometimes that I've seen enough horrid things that no image bothers me any longer. But that's not the point. The point is, the healers, Severus, Filius, and two of the injured Aurors on light duty have been playing with the equation, and have a decent idea how to reintegrate the memories she evidently pulled out of both of them during the torture. We think we've found them, though they're locked up relatively tightly and they appear quite fragmented and intermingled with other materials. Still, if Lily's notes were faithful, and the extrapolations are good, we can do _something_ with them. Perhaps. Which is why I invited you to tea today."

Petunia had no idea what she ought to say to that, but it seemed to require some response. "I'm sure everyone has done his best," she said tentatively.

"Are you interested in a short trip to St. Mungo's, then? I wasn't sure, when I initially wrote, that we'd be ready by now, but once we were, I asked them to wait until you at least had the opportunity, since you provided the critical information. Though I quite understand if the notion of going to a magical hospital is too alarming."

"I, no, I think it would be all right," Petunia said, still tentative. The notion of going to a magical hospital _was_ alarming, and she didn't quite know what to expect, but Augusta was right: if they were going to try this because of something she'd done, she probably ought to see, to bear witness, perhaps. And besides, when else was she going to get _credit_ for something magical? "Your grandson didn't indicate you intended to try today when he mentioned it."

"He doesn't know," Augusta said shortly. "He's been without his parents all this time; it seemed cruel to get his hopes too high."

Petunia bit her lip. Did she have the right to argue? This was this woman's son and grandson, and she thought probably in the same position, she would hate to be contradicted. Still, she couldn’t help but offer a comment. "If… Is there any chance it will work, but only for a short time?"

Augusta raised her eyebrows. "You think we should have Neville there in case it's the only chance."

"Something like that."

"We can always show him, later," Augusta pointed out, nodding toward the empty Pensieve.

"But not them. You won't be able to show them." Petunia looked at her hands for a moment, then added, "I think if I had one and only one last opportunity to see Dudley, all grown up and successful, after a very long time away, I'd want it."

Augusta considered for a moment, then smiled ruefully. "I've always said I didn't want to coddle the boy, and there I am doing it, am I not? You're quite right; I'm protecting him at their expense, and they've borne enough expense. If you'll pardon me, then, I'll contact Neville now and have him meet us there."

With that, she stood and crossed to the fireplace, lighting a flame and tossing in powder, and then kneeling and shoving her head and shoulders into the flame.

Petunia opened her mouth to call out, but when Augusta's head and shoulders vanished into the grate, she concluded either this was deliberate and harmless, or that if it was a gruesome means of suicide, Augusta's headless body probably couldn’t see her anyway. She recalled the bizarre occasion on which a group of Harry's friends had appeared in their home by way of the fireplace, and decided it must be the former; when Augusta's distant voice floated back at her, as well as a further-distant response, she was sure. She sipped more tea and waited.

* * *

Bringing a regular person--an uninjured regular person--into the wizarding hospital turned out to be more of a trial than they'd expected. For one thing, the receptionist's questions and categories of injury were confusing and difficult for Petunia to understand, and for another, she couldn't seem to imagine, once she grasped that Petunia was a "Muggle," that this was all right, despite that the two Aurors had met them at the entryway, and despite that she agreed that Augusta certainly did have the right to permit visitors for her son.

Finally, the second Auror, with an aggrieved sigh, sent one of the almost-visible whooshing shapes, like the one Filius had sent to Minerva what seemed like a year ago, racing past all of them and out the door. She had the sense it had been a small creature, perhaps a guinea pig or a Dachshund. The receptionist continued doubting them for another three minutes before stopping mid-sentence with her mouth in an o. Petunia turned to look over her shoulder.

"Hello, _Aunt_ Petunia," Harry said. He greeted the Aurors and Augusta as well, then leaned over the reception desk, going up on his toes and balancing on his forearms on the high counter as he looked upside-down at the regulation she'd been in the midst of citing. "So, I think you now see she has the permission of the MLE, the next of kin, and, you know, _me_ , which more than meets the requirement," he said. He shoved up his fringe and went on. "Also, just as a point of reference, can I just tell you I always remember people who force me to use this bloody thing to get them to do what they should have done in the first place? It's not a distinction you really want." 

The receptionist had the grace, or at least the sense, to blush, and Harry slid down. "So, we'll just be going then, shall we?"

She nodded and pointed to the lifts. Petunia realized, as they moved that way in a group, that while Harry had been talking, Neville and a familiar black man had joined them; she belatedly realized this was the man Arabella had told her had become the magical Prime Minister. He'd been to their home, some time back, which was still jarring to realize, and now, he was here. She wondered if he didn't have anything better to be doing, but then as they all crowded into one lift, he pulled an enormous sandwich out if his pocket and started eating it, and she concluded that even ministers required lunch. Or supper. It was nearly five o'clock.

Once they left the lift, the walk along the corridor seemed quite normal. Quite hospitallish. 

Until she glanced through an open door and saw a bright green person in the midst of an argument with what she assumed was a nurse. As the argument was about the necessity of clothing, she could see he was quite green all over, until, a moment later, he turned quite pink.

Well, fluctuating skin color was probably a good reason to see a nurse.

She kept walking.

Three doors later, she was accosted by a man who evidently thought she might like his autograph or, even better, for him to run his hands over her breasts, and seemed unconvinced by her assertion she had no idea who he was, but Harry promptly shoved the man back into his room and told him to use joined-up writing to do more photographs, and he went.

She decided this was less like a hospital and more like a madhouse, then closed her eyes for a moment as it occurred to her that _naturally_ if the Longbottoms had literally lost their minds, it would.

At last, toward the end of the corridor, the Aurors and Augusta turned into a quiet room. There were only the two patients there propped in chairs and looking blankly in the direction of the door as the whole group filed in and formed a rough semi-circle. Petunia belatedly noticed Filius in the corner and a tall, thin ginger-haired young man sitting off to the side with an enormous roll of paper and another of those old-style quills, plus at least two more poking up out of the battered bag on the floor beside him.

The woman--Alice--held up her hand toward Petunia. Neville stepped forward, but she pulled back and opened her mouth, making a sound Petunia had no way of describing, even to herself. It was a keening sound, perhaps, or growling, or singing in another dimension. Neville stepped back quickly, looking from side to side. "She's never done that before," he said. He looked to his grandmother, who was conferring quietly with Filius. 

"She's been agitated all afternoon," Filius said, "ever since I arrived and began setting up." He gestured to a little table, which held an odd etched metal box, another shallow stone goblet she thought must also be a Pensieve, several scrolls, a scattered handful of long slender tubes of various materials, a tarnished silver key, four beakers of viscous fluids, and a wide flat bowl. "My hope is that it's because I've got it right. It could be because I've got it wrong. Or, it could be random, but the staff reports she's never like this, so I'm hopeful."

"Hopeful." Neville shoved his hands in his pockets and didn't say any more, but Petunia could see the muscles in front of his ears and in his temples fluttering, and she thought that in the same situation, if such a thing were possible, Dudley would be coping considerably less well. She hadn't seen him in two weeks, since an uncomfortable visit in Arabella's sitting room, but he'd not told Vernon where she was, obviously, and had been pleasant enough, despite the awkwardness, so perhaps he'd come round again, eventually. She shook her head; Dudley wasn't here, and Neville was. She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow and squeezed.

"Are we ready?" Filius asked.

The red-haired man nodded, and Neville did as well, and Augusta and the pair of Aurors arranged themselves in an off-center triangle around the table. "Harry, if you could bring her over?" Augusta asked.

Harry went around behind Alice, who was still making the strange low sound, and pushed her chair forward into place, balancing the triangle. She went quiet as the chair drifted to gently touch the table, which didn't jolt at all, and as soon as Harry took two steps back a mist seemed to come up around them all, an arch that Petunia could see through but which, like so many of the other things she'd "seen" lately, she couldn’t quite manage to perceive. The wondered, as she watched, whether ghosts were inherently magical, and if this might be why, despite that Lily had insisted, years ago, that there were castle ghosts that were practically alive, regular people tended to report only odd flickers.

She set the thought aside and refocused her attention, aware that the sinews of Neville's arm, under her hands, had tautened, and that she herself was gripping harder.

For all she was watching with care, she wasn't sure what she was seeing.

First, the metal box was opened by application of the key to an invisible hole in the roof, splitting down the center into two halves, each encased in another metal, when the top was lifted away. The scribe was writing furiously on his scroll as Filius spoke words she couldn’t understand. The words felt as though they were vibrating, more than sound always did, as though they were being spoken by the room or--oh, by the misty arch around them? The sounds echoed as he poured a bright-green fluid from the first beaker into the first of the twinned metal containers, then stirred first with a wooden tube and then with a glass one . A plume of smoke, or steam, came up and the echo grew discordant as Filius lifted the box and poured the contents, now the color of mossy muck, into the bowl.

It occurred to Petunia she could ask what was going on; surely the others present were understanding more than she was. She looked up, but Neville's expression was rapt, and Harry looked equally puzzled. Only the very somber minister seemed to have any sense of what might be going on, and she didn't think she could very well bother him, so she went back to watching. The contents of the second beaker went into the bowl next, poured in a slow drip down the edge of the bowl to pool like oil just around and atop the green mass. Just as the fluid was about to meet in the center of the dish, Filius selected the metal tube and stood it upright in the void and allowed the slithering pool to close around it.

He spoke another charm.

"Harry?" Petunia watched a stream of crystalline transparency shoot up through the tube; it must be hollow--and bounce off the top of the dome the Aurors and Augusta were generating around the table. "What's--"

"Shh!" Neville didn't glance down, but his sharp whisper didn't feel angry, just that he was listening. Which she couldn't object to, since that was probably the only way anyone was going to be able to tell her what in the world was happening. 

Filius picked up the goblet--the Pensieve--and caught drops as the rush of material shattered and broke into liquidly jagged fragments where it hit the whatever-it-was dome. Some missed and hit the floor, and he scowled, but he collected what he could until the oily goo snaked up the tube and into the top of it. Everything stilled, and no one spoke as he returned the stuff to its beaker, dull now and thinned, and poured the green-black mud, darker now, back into its metal box. He glanced at Augusta, as if to confirm things were going as expected, Petunia thought, and picked up the flat bowl, wiping the surface clean with a long swatch of perhaps linen, then closed the metal box and wrapped all three tubes in the dirtied cloth. Last, he set his wand spinning atop his hand, and the missed drips came up, in bits and parts, and into the Pensieve as well. 

Petunia wondered why he'd had to catch any, if that was possible, but everyone in the room was silent.

Everyone but Alice. 

She reached for the Pensieve, hands clumsy and unpracticed, gaze fierce and nearly coherent, though nothing like the laughing woman in the 1980 photographs. The dome flickered gently as Filius came around the table and Augusta and the Aurors shifted to maintain the balance of the space, communicating somehow to make their movements synchronic and smooth.

Filius lifted the goblet and stabbed at it with his wand, and Alice leaned forward. Fell forward. Fell into the goblet, which was apparently, impossibly, resizing itself to allow it. She remained there for long minutes as the unseen fluid crawled over her skin crackling, like electric silicon, and absorbed.

And then, she sat up. She sat up purposefully, looked her mother in law in the eye, and rasped, "How long?"

Augusta dropped her hands to her sides, breaking the dome, which Petunia belatedly realized was for the purpose of containing what they were doing, and opened her mouth, but she couldn’t say anything, and Alice asked again. "Is it…It's been a very long time, I've been gone."

Neville wrenched his elbow out of Petunia's hand with an apologetic glance and took a step. "A long time," he said.

She looked up as he put his hand on her shoulder, and after a moment her eyes lit with recognition, then filled with tears. "Oh, no. I've missed--"

"Only the scary parts," Neville said. "Now it's getting good."

"Is it?"

Neville crouched, and Petunia watched his profile as he looked up at his mother in her chair and brushed her hair back behind her ear. "Promise."

Augusta cleared her throat. "We didn't understand," she said, also suspiciously raspy. "You'd never liked sweets, after all."

"There are likely holes," Filius said. "Time, the contaminant, shreds that fragmented… Severus and I couldn’t work a way around any of that." 

"Of course." Alice's eyes remained sad, but she smiled slightly. "What did I use? To store it?"

Augusta sighed and glanced at the box still closed on the table. "It was a good idea, the urn. It held personal remains already, so of course it would be clear it did, if they'd tumbled to you sending your memories elsewhere, and it was divided already, so you wouldn't have to merge. Of course, it was also _too_ good; there was nothing about the urn containing remains that triggered any question." She smiled. "Still, it was a good job. I assume you put your own mind in with Frank's father to minimize confusion due to bloodline?"

"If I had time to consider it. I don't know. I don't remember what caused me to use it--on both of us, it would seem, which would imply an attack by the…" she gestured, frowning, tapping her thumb to her middle finger rapidly. "The ones we were fighting," she finally said. 

"The Death Eaters," Neville supplied.

"Of course. In any case, we must have been home, to choose an urn full of ashes to be the vessel, but I don't recall anything else. Now that you tell me, I recognize it, and apparently I've known all day, but there when I first woke up, I didn't have any idea. How odd." She frowned, but shook her head when Neville put out a concerned hand. 

Petunia stared, finally grasping, or rather, realizing they were serious, that the medium of storage had been, literally, the ashes of another person. Ugh. She staggered back, bumping into the solid wall of the Minister, who steadied her. She turned and looked up, but he was looking past her at the group centered on the table. "Hell of a piece of work, you lot. Filius, tell Snape I said so." He grimaced. "Matters of state call, or I'd stay for the rest." And with that, he went out the door, leaving Petunia standing with Harry, apart from the group working and Neville.

Everyone turned and looked at Frank Longbottom, still recumbent in his chair, nowhere near as animated as Alice had been.

Alice gasped in horror. "I didn't know how bad…" She shook her head. "I've seen him every day, I suppose, but my perception has been askew in so many ways." She looked at Neville. "Could you help me?"

"You can't stand, can you?"

She shook her head. "I think not, if you're grown. Just push the chair for Mummy."

Neville blushed, but moved the chair toward Frank's. Alice reached and took her husband's limp hand, stroking it, her expression grim. "I don't know how well it worked, if…I must have done both of us. I don't remember being anywhere near ready to actually try it, or teach anyone else to." She glanced back at Augusta. "I don't know if he'll come back," she said.

Augusta nodded, eyes bright. "The effort will be enough," she said.

"Also…" Alice frowned, apparently just now aware of something else. "I think I know you all--except you, and you," she said, pointing at Petunia and the younger Auror, "well, and that one I assume is the child of my friend because I know the eyes and the hair. But I have no names. You've said them, but they're gone again already."

Filius cleared his throat. "As I said. Holes. I won't be surprised if there are others; frankly, I'm astonished you're physically as well as you are."

She sighed. "I'm tiring, though. And it can't have been more than…" She frowned again. "There's another one."

"Perhaps you're just disoriented," Petunia suggested. "That is… is that possible?"

"It's possible," Filius agreed. "Though I think assessment will be a lengthy process. But I'd like to finish this, as it's fairly difficult work and I'd rather not wait into the evening; I'll get sleepy."

"Of course," Alice said. She leaned back in her chair, which obligingly tilted slightly to allow her to rest, and smiled up at Neville, who went around and pushed the other chair forward. The group reset itself, and the entire procedure carried forth again with the other half of the urn and fresh beakers of fluid. Petunia watched again, though as it was somewhat familiar this time, her attention wasn't as fixed. She looked about, watching Neville's response, and Alice's, and Harry's.

Harry, still forward of her, fidgeted, shifting his weight, his shirt-tail fluttering.

That struck her as odd, as there was no breeze and he wasn't moving _that_ much, and all at once, as she felt a gust of air start and increase, Petunia realized Harry was upset. Very upset. Like he sometimes had been as a child, like he had been the year he vanished at thirteen. She caught Neville's eye and glanced back at Harry, but Neville either didn't realize the significance, or didn't have the emotional energy to spare, and Petunia bit her lip.

She'd never attempted to confront him about the flickering lights or shattering glass, leaving that to Vernon when it was disruptive, but it occurred to her that he might disrupt what the others were doing. She stepped forward and set her hand on his elbow. He shook her off, shooting a glare over his shoulder, but Augusta glanced over at the sudden movement, and her eyes widened. Petunia took a deep breath. "Harry, I doubt you want to ruin this for your friend."

He whirled, and for a moment the air felt hot, but then his jaw tightened and he looked at Neville, who moved, subtly, to place himself between Harry and Alice, and Harry closed his eyes. "Sorry. I should go." He went to the door, then turned back. "Nev, it's not. Nothing's wrong. I'm _glad_ you get your mum back. Just…" He pressed his lips together and gestured, then turned on his heel. Petunia stared after him, uncertain whether to follow, but if he was upset that he didn't get his own mother back, it hardly seemed likely he'd want to talk to her. She watched the ritual closing inside the dome, and waited for Frank to take the Pensieve.

He didn't move.

Filius stepped forward to assist, then beckoned to Augusta to help as well, and between them they maneuvered him and the Pensieve into position. He sputtered, apparently trying to breathe the goo, and reared back up out of it, but they forced him down again. And again. Petunia shuddered, and across from her, Alice gulped and let out one sob. Finally, on the third try, Frank quieted, and he stayed still down in the Pensieve for a long while.

Longer than Alice, she thought, though maybe it was that she was more aware of what might come.

Finally, he clawed at the cup once more, and slid down low in his chair. "Muh." His voice was gravelly and raw, and his speech was unclear, but clearly he recognized Augusta, so that was something. She turned his chair and knelt, grasping his pale limp hand in hers as he shook. Neville pushed Alice closer, and the four of them huddled, Frank letting loose silent tears that streamed down his cheeks and Neville gray-faced but standing tall until, after a moment, he knelt as well. 

Petunia looked away, watching everything but them as the Aurors and Filius tidied up. The scribe, across from her, unobtrusive throughout and still as he continued to scribble, apparently making notes on things she couldn't see, raised his right hand, catching the cuff of his sleeve against his palm and swiping surreptitiously under both eyes, under the rims of his spectacles, never lifting the quill off the page. Finally, he rolled up the long page and set it down on the chair as he stood. He bent and spoke briefly to Filius, who nodded, and then brushed past Petunia on his way out the door.

Not two minutes later, Filius and his Auror friends had everything packaged up, from the resealed urn to the various tubes, and were on their way out as well.

Petunia shifted from one foot to the other; she probably could make her own way home, one way or another. Or go find Harry. Or perhaps she could find the Ministry; she had a vague idea where it was. However, she'd come in with Augusta, and leaving without her seemed terribly rude.

Interrupting seemed worse.

She shifted her weight again, then went and sat in the chair next to the one the scribe had used. Apparently he would be back; he'd left his things. She looked at the scroll, lying there on the seat beside her, but didn't touch it, despite that she quite badly wanted to know what she hadn't been able to see. It crossed her mind that she might just make herself jealous all over again, learning that everyone else had seen, oh, colors and sprouting roses and twinkling fairies with wings, but that wasn't why she didn't look. It was more, she didn't know if anything bad would happen if she picked up the scroll.

And that it was none of her business.

So, she watched it sitting there, still, and watched the gentle flutter of the very tips of the quills sticking up out of the scribe's bag, until three men and a woman in crisp green robes rushed into the room, followed by the scribe.

Augusta looked up as the new arrivals rushed to examine both Frank and Alice, all speaking loudly, all measuring things and asking questions and pulling on various limbs and noses.

The scribe bent to pick up his bag and scroll, and glanced at Petunia. "You're Harry's aunt?"

Petunia nodded once.

"I wrote to you, once. You haven't known Mrs Longbottom for very long, have you?"

"No--I only just met her, some weeks ago."

The young man smiled tightly. "I give her roughly another thirty seconds before she transfigures her shoe into a rope and trusses up at least two of those Healers. You might want to make your get-away while you've the chance."

"She wouldn’t…" Petunia stood as he straightened, and looked past him; Augusta appeared to be quite put out indeed, and getting more annoyed by the moment. "Perhaps she would. Ah Augusta?"

The young man grimaced, but Augusta looked over at her. "Oh. Oh, dear. I didn't recall… I may be a little while. I've idiots to deal with, you see."

"Oh. All right." Petunia started to sit back down, but the young man seized her elbow. 

"I can see her home," he said, turning. "Or somewhere else. I've nowhere to be."

Augusta looked at Petunia, then back at the cacophonous group in green. "Would it be all right?"

Petunia shrugged. She had nowhere else to be either, not really.

"I'm Percy, by the way."

"And you wrote to me, you say?" She followed him to the door and along the corridor, carefully avoiding the door behind which had been the lecherous man with the autographs. "Oh! P. Weasley, Temporary somesuch assistant."

"Exactly so. You're a Muggle, then?"

"I. Yes, but I'm allowed to be here."

"Yes, I rather worked that out based on the Minister himself laying his hands on you and then leaving you alone. He was an Auror, you know. Working in the Muggle Ministry for a time, so possibly some would consider him a spy, as well."

Petunia didn't know what to say. "…Oh." She brought up her hands before her midsection, twisting them nervously.

"Oh, no, nothing bad. I just meant, if he didn't mean you to be here, you wouldn’t be. He's quite competent."

Petunia got the odd sense 'competent' was, to this Percy, high praise. She deliberately put her hands down. "Well. Good, then."

"Anyway. I wonder…"

"What?"

"Do you need to get back? I mean, Harry's mentioned you, said you've been a lot less, um…"

"Dreadful?"

"He didn't use that word! But said you've seemed interested where you've never been before, and of course, my father--you've met him--would love to have another actual Muggle to quiz."

"I've met him?"

"Yes, in your fireplace."

"With the tongue-swelling hex."

"The…" Percy's brow crinkled. "Oh. No, that wasn't him. That would be one of the twins." His face fell slightly, but he pasted on a pleasant smile. "That was one of their more obnoxious inventions."

"And so, you want me to go where?"

"Oh. Home. I mean, the Burrow, which, all right, it's a little crowded and rather noisy these days, with Harry and Hermione and Charlie's still home, too, but they're an all right bunch."

"They? Not you?"

He flushed. "We."

She didn't ask why that had made him blush, but she impulsively touched his arm. "I might like that. For a little while. Plus, I want to see if Harry's all right."

"He's probably not there."

"I thought he was staying there? He said, before, and then you said--"

"Oh, right, but I meant, he's probably gone flying."

"Really?"

"He was upset, when he left. And he goes flying for any reason. I mean, any upset is a good excuse, plus any happy accident is something to celebrate, and so on."

"Well. Perhaps he'll come home for supper, then."

"Good. I need to duplicate my notes for Flitwick and the medical library. Uh, have you been by Floo before?"

"That's the fireplace one." Petunia sighed. "Brooms, port keys, vanishing, and fireplaces. Are there any other bizarre means of transport I should know about as options?"

"Er. Dragon, perhaps. Thestral-drawn carriage."

"Dragon! There's not still a dragon, is there?"

"Hmm? Oh, no. Charlie's mates in Romania took him over a couple of weeks ago. It was quite a production."

Petunia envisioned a horrible great dinosaur sort shooting gouts of flame, charring the shrubberies and possibly small children, and shuddered. "I can imagine."

He shrugged. "Maybe no; I was surprised how professional they all were. I mean, the only dragon wrangler I know is Charlie, and he doesn't spend his time around me being proper. That's evidently my job."

"At least it's someone's."

They'd stopped in the lobby, and Percy tilted his head in assent. "Anyway. You'll see. Just let me take care of this." He stepped into the lift and beckoned, and they dropped down into the earth to the basement level, the library.

"What's a Thestral?" she asked as they descended.

"I suppose the most concise description might be carnivorous winged horse-skeleton."

"My word. Fireplace travel doesn't sound quite so harrowing, comparatively."

* * *

Petunia straightened the rather loud but homey knit blanket draped over the back of Arabella's couch and waited for the knock at the door. Dudley would be along any time, and with the events of the past week, she had a great deal to tell him. She hoped it wasn't a disaster.

It was hard to quite make sense of the changes in her life, these last months, and indeed, when she attempted to compare October to February directly, it was virtually unfathomable. She remembered, quite clearly, that on the first of October, she had flipped through an old photo album and been vaguely glad that they'd never included Harry in the pictures. She'd supposed that in a sort of way she'd been a bit sorry to lose her link to Lily, but mostly, she'd been glad that that part of her life was behind her. She'd smoothed her fingertip over photographs of Dudley, still, silent photographs of his first steps and first birthday and first gleaming tooth and thought that finally, things were settling down.

And then the letters had come, and then Augusta, and then the bizarre moment of remember there was still a link, and realizing it wasn't settled at all.

She supposed she should have allowed Harry to remove the memories, that night, after it all. It would have been so much easier. It would have been so much less complicated. She would still live at number four, Privet Drive, and would still be seeing to Vernon's pressed shirts and reading the newspaper and clearing away Dudley's socks from the railing and his plates of sandwich crusts and crushed crumbs of greasy crisps.

Of course, when she thought of it like that, it hardly sounded appealing, but it would have been familiar and comfortable. Sort of comfortable. Not new and perpetually a little bit frightening, at any rate.

Instead, she lived with a witch who wasn't quite a witch, though evidently she had certain small talents that weren't especially ordinary for humans. For Muggles. She was even adopting a new vocabulary, slowly. And today, she was having Dudley to tea, to tell him about her new employer.

She straightened the blanket again and adjusted a few of the frames of the many photographs (of cats, and of Harry when he was small) on the sitting room wall until there was a knock at the door.

She went to open it, smiling, and blinked, then backed away. "Vernon!"

Dudley gaped, then turned to look over his shoulder, finding his father striding, red-faced up the walk behind him. He whirled back to the door. "I swear, I didn't--"

She nodded, staring numbly past him, and then yanked him inside and slammed the door, turning the bolt with shaking fingers. "He must have followed you," she said. "I'm sorry, Dudley."

"For what?"

Vernon reached the door and rattled the handle, then pounded on the wood with his fists, making the plank shudder with each thump. "Thought you'd escape, did you?" he shouted. "Always knew you were the wrong sort, frigid and disgusting, pathetic…"

Petunia said nothing, standing dumbly against the door as it shook.

"Thought you'd run off to be one of the _freaks_. Thought Vernon wasn't good enough any more, now your freak sister's incurable _boy_ was gone, and taking _my son_ with you!"

Petunia imagined how he looked, on the other side of the door, spittle flying, fists pounding, sweat dripping from his brow as the frothing began. She looked at Dudley and spoke quietly despite the continued shouting from outside. "For asking you to keep my secret. For not teaching you… for not even realizing we should be frightened."

Dudley shook his head. His fists clenched and opened, and she wondered whether he intended to hit her, or open the door and hit his father, or whether his job throwing people out kept those urges in check. It occurred to her, incongruously, that he'd slimmed down some, since she'd moved out. She wondered, too, whether it was the job, or Vernon not taking care of him, or… The door shuddered again, and the top hinge came partially away from the frame. She glanced up and stepped away quickly, wondering how long it was going to take him to realize coming in through a locked door was not the easiest approach. The hinge came further away, and she wondered whether maybe he didn't have the right of it, and she turned away, moving to the little hall and the guest room she'd been living in for months. Dudley followed. 

"You should call the police," he suggested

"I'm calling Harry first," she said. She fished the coin out, wondering whether he'd be busy, and activated the charm. "I hope he can get here faster." Arabella had a mobile phone, but she was out and had it with her, and the regular telephone was in the kitchen, and just then, she heard glass shatter. 

"Apparently, unless there's an extension in here, you're calling Harry only," Dudley said. He quietly closed the door, then leaned against it with all his weight. "Do hope he's fast about it, though I've no idea how telling his name to your--what was that, five quid?--would do a thing. But this door is thin and I can't move that wardrobe over here quick and quiet, so if he's not..."

Petunia bit her lip, then joined him leaning there. After all, even her slight weight was still more weight, and every little bit would help.

The sound of more broken glass, something heavier than the window-pane, was followed by the cessation of shouting, which was something of a surprise, but neither of them moved to open the door. "Petunia?"

She sighed. "Arabella."

"Petunia, I've called for the police, but I'm dreadful at knots, and I think we should tie this--oh! What!"

Dudley straightened and pulled the door open to find Percy Weasley scowling at Vernon, who was once again on the floor. Percy glanced at Dudley and pointed his wand, but said nothing; clearly he wasn't quite sure whose side he was on. Petunia tried to smile, though it seemed her face didn't quite work. "Dudley was here for tea. Vernon …apparently followed him," she said quietly. 

Percy held his wand out a moment longer, then shrugged and pointed it back at Vernon, sending slithering ropes out of it to bind his hands and feet. He righted him, dropping him (probably uncomfortably) on the sofa, and turned to Arabella. "I quite agree. Harry was tied up--not like this--and I was free. Hope it's all right? You've called the Au--the authorities?"

"On their way."

"Right, well, I probably ought not to be here when they are, and as you'd already disabled him, well. Dudley, was it, can you tie a fair knot? Could it have been you that bound him?"

Dudley nodded.

"Mrs Dursley--"

"I've told you, Percy. Petunia." Dudley looked at her oddly, but she _had_ told Percy to call her Petunia, and there was nothing wrong with that.

"Petunia, then. I really don't think you're safe here, any longer. Have you had a chance to think any more about--"

"I have, and if you're going, well. Perhaps you can come back in a couple of hours? Or Harry, I suppose. There will be details to see to."

He paused, taken aback, then nodded, turned slightly on the spot, and vanished.

Petunia wondered whether she was ever going to become accustomed to that.

The police arrived quite promptly, really, which was both nice and horrible. Nice, because it was reassuring that they'd been on the spot in minutes, but horrible, because they had hundreds of questions, about when she'd left, and why, and what she was doing still so near, and Petunia hadn't expected to answer any of this. Eventually, a nice young female officer had asked the one in charge to see to Dudley, who was holding up quite well, and shuffled Petunia off to the kitchen to ask whether there was anything else, and Petunia, who hadn't been expecting to tell anyone, ever, described the bruises from that Friday in October.

Vernon refused to say a word, glaring viciously at everyone involved. Petunia looked at him, sitting there where he'd been wrestled upright by the larger officer, and shook her head. "I honestly don't know," she said to the girl, who really was quite young. "I never thought about it, and then recently, all at once, I did."

The girl made some more notes, asked if there had been any photographs of the bruises (heavens, no! Petunia said, flushing hot; too bad, said the girl, but it's a good job there are witnesses today), and left her sitting with a cold glass of water and goosebumps on her arms.

Finally, after far too long, they charged Vernon with a list of bad acts, from breaking in to destroying property to she didn't listen what all else, and marched him to their car. Petunia remained at the table, staring at the wallpaper, while Dudley and Arabella cleared up broken glass.

Finally, Dudley came into the kitchen and picked up the hand-set of the telephone, glancing at her before he punched a series of numbers and speaking briefly to someone she gathered was his supervisor. He put it back down a moment later, then got a beer and came over to pull out the other chair. "So. Chance to think about what?"

"What?"

"That bloke, Percy, you said? Asked if you'd had a chance to think, and you cut him off." He opened the beer and took a drink, making a face. "This is dreadful."

Petunia raised her eyebrows. "I didn't know you'd clear opinions as to beer quality."

"Mum, I work in a pub. Everyone who works in a pub has opinions about beer. This? Is shit. But it's something, and after all of that, I think a beer is in order. But you were saying?"

"I wasn't saying anything."

He rolled his eyes. "You know, I know I was an arse for a long time. I still live in Dad's house--assuming he doesn't manage to do anything stupid and get himself carted off--and he's an arse, and it's never much been a help to think, there. But I'm not a _complete_ moron, and ever since you left, I've been thinking."

"You've been thinking for four months?"

"No, I mean, I've been--this sounds idiotic. I've been practicing thinking. Reading the papers, you know, that sort of thing. D'you know, there's a, a bill or an act, can't remember what's what, to take inheritance out of the House of Lords?"

Petunia stared. She couldn’t recall Dudley ever making any comment, in any direction, as to any topic that bore any resemblance to politics. After a moment, she nodded. "I'd read that--just the headline, you know; I'm not much for government."

"See, though? It's a change, me thinking, and I might be getting the hang of it. Which means, when you cut him--that Percy bloke--off like that, it seemed to me, you were keeping him from saying something you didn't want said in front of, possibly Mrs Figg, but more likely, me. And you'd said, before, you had news. So, I thought maybe it wasn't the moment to step in, but, think about what?"

"This is hardly the way I wanted to discuss this."

He took another sip of the beer and waited.

"Right, then." Petunia took a deep breath. "I've been needing to get a job, I told you."

"Right, and you were worried, you hadn't any skills. Neither did I, but you can't probably get work as a bouncer."

"No, I think scolding people until they leave wouldn’t be effective with belligerent drunks."

He chuckled.

"So, I was telling Percy about this."

"Who is he? Friend of Harry's I imagine, but--"

"Oh." Petunia shook her head. "I forget, sometimes. They all know you, you see, from Harry. Percy is one of the brothers of Harry's friend Ron. Ron was the one that came with the other brothers, that time--"

"With the horrible tongue?"

"Then, too, but I was thinking of the time with the window."

"Oh. Right. I'm surprised Dad didn't have a breakdown. Anyway. So, you've been telling Harry's friend's brother about your job troubles."

"Right, and he had an idea, and I think I might take it."

"An idea for a job? Don't they need, you know." He waved his hand around.

"Yes, but they've a new Minister. You remember, the man--"

"Yes, I remember him."

"And he evidently is of the opinion that they need to integrate more hu-- more of us, which they call Muggles--into some of what they do. He thinks it's only fair, if they put him in the Prime Minister's office two year ago as liaison, that it should go both ways."

"I thought magic was to be a giant secret."

"Yes, so they'd only recruit from amongst the families of the witches and wizards which already knew."

He nodded and finished his beer thoughtfully. "And you wanted to tell me this because you thought I might have a problem?"

"Well, you might, but no, I wanted to tell you because I think to do the job, to do it right, I probably have to learn a lot more than I know about magic. So I probably have to go live, ah, with magical folk. I've learned some here, from Percy, from Augusta, from Arabella, but that's not the same."

"Oh." He tilted the bottle around on its edge on the table top. "And you think you're going to go."

"I think I am. You'd be able to visit."

"But not stay."

"I didn't ask. I didn't want to presume, and also, I imagine it's not the sort of thing you could go ahead and carry on a normal life."

"But you could?"

"I'm in my forties, Dudley. I'm not a young woman to go to the clubs and so on, and right now, since I left your father's house, I don't actually have any human friends."

"Muggle."

"What?"

"Muggle friends. You said that's what they called them, right?"

"Oh. Right." 

"But you have magic friends. Mrs Figg and the others."

"Yes."

Dudley pursed his lips. "I can't believe I'm about to ask this, but are you, ah, you and this Percy…"

"What? No! He's not much older than you."

Dudley shrugged. "He seemed sort of protective, is all. And believe it or not, I've had some opportunity to see couples meet and talk, at work. It wouldn't be…" He shrugged again. "I know about Dad and the girls and whatnot--he always says I should take what I can get--so, if you were, I mean. Anyway."

She shook her head. "He's been my guide, at the Ministry, introducing me around and such. Besides, we've a lot in common, is how we got started talking. He's been a good friend. Actually, maybe my first good friend that had nothing to do with location or anything someone wanted of me--not to belittle Arabella. He was estranged from his family for a long time."

"Estranged?"

"He didn't agree with them, politically. He's come to believe he was wrong." Petunia looked Dudley in the eye. "You see why that would be familiar." She opened her mouth to speak again when there was a rap at the kitchen window. She jumped, far more startled than she thought she'd really reason to be, but Dudley could see more clearly than she, and he set his big hand on her arm. 

"I think it's your friend now. Ginger hair, and he's a tall one."

Petunia relaxed and went through the mud room to the back door.

"Authorities are gone, I hope?"

"A little while ago. Come in. I want you to meet Dudley more properly."

Percy came in and moved past her, holding out his hand. "Percy Weasley. At the moment, I'm the temporary special assistant for Remembrance and Rebuilding, under the Minister, which essentially means I do anything that helps toward the memorial, the museum, and whatever else the Minister deems relevant, which, for the time being, also includes revamping Muggle relations and creating an education and cross-cultural center."

"Dudley Dursley. Uh, bouncer, pub on the corner."

Percy shook Dudley's hand. "Did they cart your father off, then?"

"For the evening, at least. They'll need us back to give more statements, I think." Dudley gave Percy a speculative look. "Unless you lot can fix things again, make them think they have all they need."

"Dudley!" Petunia scowled. "We don't need Percy fixing--"

"It's not a bad idea, really," Percy said. "Hermione and Fleur both say you oughtn't to have to keep re-living things."

"Yes, well, I think I can."

Dudley held up his hands as if in defeat and turned back to Percy. "She says you've about got her convinced to go live amongst magical folk."

"Does she, now?" Percy smiled, and Petunia sighed.

"She does," she said, "and in fact, given that the front door's a wreck and Vernon knows where I am, it might be best if I just went."

"Tonight?" Percy asked, just as Dudley say, "Probably for the best."

She twisted her hands together, nervous. "I've imposed on Arabella for months, and now I've got her house half-obliterated--"

"None of that," said Arabella from the living room. "It's no imposition, Petunia, and I've been glad to have the company. Vernon being a violent bastard isn't much news to me, and I knew this was a possibility. I'm too old not to be aware of the risks in my life." She smiled gently. "But you should go; you've wanted to for decades."

Petunia found herself nodding again. "Then I suppose I should pack," she said. 

"I'll help," Arabella told her. "Dudley, why don't you get Percy a beer?"

* * *

The house to which Percy had brought her was small, more cottage than castle, but it was homey and warm, which, given it was the home of Percy's French sister-in-law, wasn't surprising. The girl was a whirlwind of activity, magical and otherwise, though apparently this evening, the couple was out.

Percy had set her down in the garden, assuring her that honestly, Fleur was more than happy to have her until she had an opportunity to find a place of her own, and that because the cottage had various charms still on it--degrading some, he added, and probably not currently especially likely to keep out a very determined wizard or witch, but enough to deter a Muggle--Vernon wouldn’t find her even if he somehow decided to go for a jaunt along this very stretch of sea.

The grave-marker, when they walked by it, surprised her, and she paused to see whose it was. She'd understood the home to be new, and they'd hardly had time to have anyone to bury, had they? She'd seen the grave of the brother that had died, and it was at the Weasley home. The other Weasley home. Everyone else called it the Burrow, but somehow, that felt awfully familiar to her, and she didn't feel good about referring to it that way, even though she knew she was being ridiculous. Still, it was one of those odd edges that rubbed, in these new relationships she was building, and since what she called places in her own mind was something she had control over, she called it the Weasley home.

She brushed away grass that was slightly overgrown and read the words, then looked up. "A free house-elf?" 

Percy moved her hand gently aside and cut back the grass. "He saved Harry--and several others--out of imprisonment, and brought them here. He died doing it."

"Oh. How sad. But …free?"

Percy shook his head. "No idea. House-elves are servant creatures by nature, and usually, freeing one is punishment. They literally live to serve, though you'll want to avoid engaging Hermione on that subject. But this one wanted to be free, and Harry had freed him from a rather difficult master. He therefore chose to serve Harry instead."

"How does that make him free?"

"Harry didn't choose to keep him; Dobby chose to serve. Anyway, he was unique. Fleur usually sees to his grave, but she must have been busy, lately."

"Well, it's good of you to cut the grass, then."

He put his wand away and held out his hand. "Let me show you your room."

She followed him into the house and through the sitting room to the stairs. The room, like the rest of the house, had the slightly-worn feeling of a place comfortably lived-in, as though anyone visiting ought to feel part of a community of visitors. Percy pulled her tiny boxes and suitcase from his pocket and set them on the floor before enlarging them. 

"Thank you," she said automatically.

"It's no problem. Do you need help unpacking?"

Petunia started to automatically say she didn't, but she'd learned, on visits to magical homes, that sometimes, things worked differently where she least expected, so first she opened drawers and doors and checked that there were hooks in the wardrobe, which there were. "I think I can manage."

"All right. I'll just see to supper, then."

She frowned. "I can do that. I mean, there's no need, if I'm keeping you--"

He shook his head. "Even if Harry wouldn’t have my head if I left you to fend for yourself and then there was a terrible broccoli-steaming accident, I mean to stay and get you settled."

"You must have other things you planned to do this evening. It's a Friday night, and you're--"

"I didn't have specific plans, and also, whilst I was away, between when you called and when I returned, I cleared my schedule." Percy shoved his glasses up his narrow nose. "Ah, I thought you might… I'm given to understand being through this sort of attack can leave a person a bit jumpy."

"Yes, but I don't want you to feel obliged." Petunia explained. "You should be out having fun with your friends."

Percy lifted a brow, an expression Petunia still wished she could manage, and nodded, closing the door behind him as he left the room.

Petunia looked at the door for a moment, wondering why she felt annoyed that he'd gone when she'd told him to, and set about unpacking.

It didn't take long; she'd only her own clothes, a few photo albums, and some general memorabilia. She hung up her clothes and set framed photos of Dudley on top of the chest and on the bedside table. Fifteen minutes later, she'd nested the boxes and stood on tiptoe to shove them on top of the wardrobe; her suitcase fit in the bottom of it, next to her shoes.

She looked around, adjusting the photographs and moving two little figurines closer to each other on the other table, then straightened the bedspread and brushed off her hands.

It occurred to her that probably Bill and his wife didn't have a television, as Wizarding households generally didn't unless they were the homes of Squibs who lived in Muggle neighborhoods, and she wondered whether she'd be able to find anything to occupy her time. Once she was working, she'd have income and the means to spend it, one way or another, but for tonight, she was alone with her thoughts, and she found she didn't much like it. She was safe here, in theory, but she'd rather come to feel safe in Arabella's home, and it had turned out she'd not been, when it came right down to it. She wondered what it would take to work out how to use the bathtub fixtures; a soothing bath might feel nice, and she wasn't particularly hungry.

She gathered fresh underthings and a nightgown and went out onto the landing, then across to the bath, and was pleased to find that not only were the fixtures self-explanatory, but there were perfectly ordinary bottles of shampoo and a simple bar of soap.

Of the kind of soap in her own home all these years.

She blinked, wondering at the odd similarity, and ran the tub full of hot water. The shelves of the delicate étagère over the toilet contained a selection of bath salts and the like, and a note in what she guessed was Fleur's delicate hand that said "please use if you would like." She found several scents that pleased her and lingered, at last choosing a soothing lavender-vanilla and pouring it into the water before stepping over the lip of the tub and sinking down into the steaming bath.

She hadn't expected to find tears welling up as she sat there; after all, the afternoon had been terribly alarming, and she'd been more or less all right, then. And she'd been more or less all right for years, without crying in the bath. But now, once the tears started, there was shaking, and she was glad for the hot water because she felt cold under her skin.

After several minutes, to her surprise, the scent shifted, moving from subtle to intense and growing warmer, and the tension in her muscles all drained away. The water tinged purple, and the surface shimmered as she sat up straighter, realizing that the bubble bath was magical. Nothing else odd happened, and the scent was still pleasant, but she reached for soap and hurried through the rest of her bath despite that there was really no reason to rush. She stood in the water and reached for a towel as it swirled toward the drain around her ankles. Her skin was pleasantly pink and she felt flushed and relaxed, noticing as she bent to dry her legs that even the general tensions she'd had for years, the slightly stiff back and hips, had melted away.

Perhaps there was something to be said for magical bath salts.

She put on clean underwear and her nightgown and combed her hair, which was damp from steam, and tied it into a knot, as usual, then hung up the towel and wondered whether she was hungry enough to eat. She felt so nice after the bath that it seemed she perhaps ought to just go straight to bed, to take advantage of the relaxation and the pleasing sensation of soft warm skin.

However, she didn't feel particularly sleepy, any more than she felt especially hungry, so she straightened up the bath and opened the door to go looking for Fleur's library. Surely there was something simple and a bit mindless, wasn't there? A romance novel, or a mystery? Or--it occurred to her perhaps there were something like Wizarding historical fiction, that she could read and learn at least a bit more context from. She was three-quarters of the way down the stairs before she realized she smelled food.

The Weasleys must have come home whilst she was in the bath.

She glanced down at her nightgown. It was modest enough, but would be profoundly inappropriate for any conversation with Bill, even though Bill was possibly the most casual of the lot--well, no, maybe that was Charlie--and she started to turn back, when Percy came around the corner from the kitchen, holding a towel in his hands. "Hi. I thought I heard you."

Petunia gasped, glancing down again at her inappropriate attire. Unlike Bill, Percy wasn't a terribly informal sort; she doubted he owned a pair of denims, unless he'd at some point acquired one for working in the garden. "I… You were going to spend the evening with friends."

"I was."

"What changed your mind? No, don't answer; I should go change."

Percy shook his head. "Nothing changed my mind, and here. _Accio_ Petunia's dressing gown." Petunia's robe sailed down the stairs past her, eluding her attempt to grab it, but Percy caught it and held it out for her to take. 

She took it, thanking him with a blush, and wrapped it tight around her. "What do you mean, nothing?"

"Nothing. I'm spending the evening with a friend."

Petunia blushed harder. "I meant--"

"Yes, I rather thought you meant; however, I chose to interpret literally. I'm intending to spend the evening with my friend, and, since she was a bit preoccupied today, I decided to make some supper." He shrugged. "I'm not exactly a French chef, but I did get some soup going, and Fleur has fresh bread."

"I just came down to look for a book."

Percy put his foot up on the bottom step and held out his hand. "Come on. You can read after you eat. I know you didn't have tea, and it's getting quite late."

"I didn't think I was hungry." Petunia took another step down and knotted the tie on her robe. "But once I smelled food, I might have changed my mind."

"Good." He gripped her hand and led the way to the kitchen, where he'd set out two dishes of soup with sliced bread and butter.

Petunia sat down in the chair he pulled out, shaking her head, and waited for him to take the other chair before sinking her spoon into the broth and taking a bite. "Oh! This is good."

He smiled. "My mother made us all get at least marginally comfortable with peeling potatoes," he said. "And then, well, I lived alone for three years, and I wasn't willing to eat takeaway every bloody evening."

She took another bite. "So you got practice."

"Yes. Most of it's not so hard; there's a recipe and generally the terminology makes it clear enough what to do, once one has learned the difference between braise and boil."

She laughed. "That's quite a difference."

"All right, then, fry and sauté."

"Boil and poach.

"Exactly."

Petunia kept eating steadily, surprised by how hungry she really, really was, and very quickly, her bowl was empty. She still had some bread, and she tore off the bottom crust to bite into as she considered how to return to the question of why Percy had stayed. "So, I'm nearly sure it should have been clear I meant for you to go, but I have to say, I'm glad, in the reality of it, to have the company. Still, I'm not sure I understand why you're still here. That is to say, it feels improper, for you to be here alone with me, and I realize there aren't witnesses, but that's beside the point, isn't it?"

He sopped up broth with a crust and put the last bit in his mouth before he answered. "There are two questions there: am I worried about propriety, and, why am I here, having dinner with you. And there are more than two answers, so you're going to have to give me a moment."

She lifted one shoulder. "All right."

"We've talked before about propriety and my long-term obsession with it. So, yes, on one level, I agree, it feels a bit improper. Possibly if someone knew I was here alone with you, conclusions might be drawn, and they might be unflattering to one or both of us. However, we've also talked about what happened when I let that concern overshadow other things, like trusting my parents and staying in touch with my brothers."

"This is hardly the same thing."

"No, but at the heart of it, it is. I may have been an idiot, a really big stubborn fool, and I can't get that back; however, I do like to think I'm teachable."

"And you learned…?"

"Not to let concerns about impropriety stand in the way of things I thought were worthwhile, is the short version."

"Oh." Petunia shook her head. "Which goes not very far at all in explaining why you're here now."

"More soup?" He stood and went to the stove, bringing back the pan.

"Perhaps a bit, but don't think you're going to distract me so--"

"No, I know. So the second thing was why am I here?" He scooped ladles of soup into their bowls and sent the pan back with an easy shove as he sat back down. "For one thing, your son told me not to hurt you."

"What? Oh, dear." Petunia set down her spoon. "He really shouldn't have. He got the idea you and I were involved somehow."

"Yes, I understood that. He explained at length, over that beer."

"I told him it was ridiculous. He just thought you were protective, which…" Petunia once again found herself struggling to find the words. "He doesn't have any experience with that. Neither do I, I suppose. You saw Vernon, and I suppose it might be that Vernon was, or is, in some way protective of what's his, but that's because he has expectations. Stated and unstated, really. So, Dudley saw you protecting me like that, even for a minute, and I think he jumped to a conclusion."

"Ah."

Petunia wasn't at all sure she'd made her point, so she stumbled on. "So, whatever he said, you're under no obligation to coddle me. That is, at some point I've got to stand on my own feet, don't I?"

"Well, yes, but it seems to me you already are."

"By living at the mercy of others and being gifted with a job?"

Percy shook his head. "Not gifted. That is to say, I made a suggestion, when the situation arose, but I don't have as many friends within the Ministry as you may think. My father, and the Minister, but after that? Not many people at all. I did an excellent job of being insufferable for a long time, you know. I've tended to be excellent at things, in general, and I was excellent at that, too."

"It's hard for me to imagine." Petunia shook her head. "I spent a long time living with a man who was horrible. You may have been insufferable, but at least it was, I suppose, intellectual and political." 

"That might be worse. Demonstrating rage and frustration about things that are personal, at least that's from the heart, motivated by places in the mind that are difficult to control and difficult to understand. Being a prick about the thicknesses of cauldron bottoms and whether one's hems are correct to the quarter-inch, that's just being a prick. I've come to learn that if I'm going to insist on a thing, it should be something worthwhile, or at least, that I should understand the relative priority it holds compared to the alternatives.

"I suppose," she said, looking him in the eye. "But you're hardly a bad man. I've watched you, with the child with the hair that changes--Teddy, is it? You're kind, under the big words."

"But despite that you think well of me, and despite that you're working to convince me I'm a good man, something I think I've a long job to work on, and despite that we've discussed everything from gardening to why your cricket is or is not better than Quidditch, you don't think we're involved."

"Of course not. It's absurd! I'm nearly twenty years older than you!"

Percy shrugged. "Eighteen, but I'm not sure that's entirely relevant."

"Oh. You…don't?"

He shook his head. 

"Oh." Petunia glanced at her bowl, once again empty, and wished she had saved a few bites to eat now, because she had no idea where this conversation was supposed to be going. Fortunately, Percy only let the silence set for a moment before he went on.

"I told Dudley I wouldn’t, by the way."

"Wouldn't what?" She thought back. "Oh. Wouldn't hurt me?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Percy, this is the most puzzling conversation I've had in years. Including the one where Filius and Augusta explained about theory equations."

"However, so far you haven't objected to the notion I might think we're… what was the word? Involved?"

"I have, I think, though not because you're unappealing. I just fail to see what you could possibly--"

"Stop."

Petunia blinked. "Why?"

"Again, there are several things to be said."

"All right."

"That you had an idiot for a husband doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot."

"Yes, but." Petunia shook her head. "Lily was always the one, even when we were very small."

"And we have a great deal in common."

"You and Lily?"

He shook his head and reached across the table to touch her hand. "No, you and I. I've thought about this, you know. And I probably should note that I think your son is more observant than you're giving him credit for."

"It sounds as though you're making a list of pluses and minuses to involvement."

"No, just pluses. The minuses, I think you've thought of on your own." Percy grinned, and Petunia noticed, not for the first time, that he didn't do it often enough. He was an appealing boy, when he wasn't far too serious--Harry had said Percy was serious nearly all the time, but Petunia didn't see things that way.

She wondered whether it was more worrying that she was agreeing he was appealing to her, or that she was doing so in conjunction with referring to him as a boy.

"And as it happens, and I'm aware that my saying this out loud rather badly strips the romance out of it, but, I rather like being needed, and, no offense, but you need me. A little. I mean, you won't, soon enough, but now? I think you do."

Petunia bit her lip. "What did you intend to do about all this, then? Feed me supper every night and see to it I remember to launder my clothes?"

"I could do that, but mostly, I think Fleur will see to those things, if you find you need help."

"Oh. Then what?" Petunia wanted to ask whether he really meant the sort of involvement that was completely absurd, the kind Dudley had decided he saw, but doing that would be dreadfully, unforgivably, unimaginably forward, and she couldn’t do it.

He stood and floated their dishes to the sink, filling them with water as they bobbed along and settled into the basin, then held out his hand again.

She took it automatically, heart racing a little because as much as it seemed like something, she wasn't sure her sense of where this might be going was realistic, but he merely walked with her past the stairs and into the sitting room, holding her snug against his right side, his hand on her waist. He pointed his wand at the wireless, then grimaced at the rather screechy music it emitted. He pointed again, turning the dial to something quieter, and set his wand on the coffee table as they sat together on the couch. He took her hand again, setting their joined fingers on his thigh. 

"So, here's my only problem," he said.

"Where?"

"It's this. You've said that you never thought you had choices. With that bastard."

"Vernon."

He pulled a face. "I don't much want to call him by name, you know? It's like how I don't like dignifying the werewolf that tore up Bill's face by calling him anything but an animal. But, all right. With Vernon. You didn't think you'd do better, and you didn't wait."

Petunia blushed. She'd known for years that being alone probably would have been easier, though she hadn't admitted it, even to herself, until four months ago. She'd been as weak at twenty as she'd been for a decade, caring badly for Harry, and as she'd been each time he'd come home and she'd done nothing to stop making his life difficult.

"I'm not saying that's a flaw. I'm saying it's a problem."

"Oh?"

"Because I don't know if you've worked out that in the same way you've learned you can say no to him, in the same way you can choose your life now--"

"I almost know that. I mean, I know it some moments, and the rest of the time, maybe not."

He looked down at her. "But the knowing moments are happening more, right? I see them. Arabella saw them."

"You asked?"

"We've both been interested in you being well, is all."

"Oh."

"Anyway, so I don't know if you've really worked out that you have the same control here. That if I push, you can say no. For any reason." He drummed the fingers of his free hand on his other thigh. "Even _I_ am ordinarily not quite this analytical about kissing."

"Kissing?"

"Well, I wasn't about to suggest you should clean my toilets. But, yes. For any reason, because I have no interest in being someone else forcing you."

Petunia wasn't at all sure what to do with the warmth in her chest. They were friends. They had a great deal in common. They'd talked about all sorts of things. They'd had supper. They'd… oh. And now, they'd kissed.

It was nothing like any kiss she'd ever shared with Vernon. Or any kiss she'd had any reason to expect to have, ever. Vernon had been demanding and gruff, bruising her lips and her body, moving her from his lips to other places she didn't like to think of before she'd even realized she ought to object.

She was aware she'd stiffened slightly at the memory when he started to pull away, and she licked her lips, closing her eyes, and followed, reconnecting quickly. No, this wasn't demanding. It was asking. Checking. Wondering.

Lingering.

It was more the sort of kiss she'd seen, and thought absurd, on the screen at the cinema, or on the daytime serials.

She didn't feel as though she knew what she was doing, as the heat in her belly continued to build and he made no move to ask for anything beyond this, but then, since she also didn't feel as though there was any good reason to stop doing this (possibly ever), she decided she didn't care. His hand came up, to graze her cheek, but the touch was light and careful, and after another moment, he pulled back again, more deliberately this time.

He took off his glasses and wiped them on the tail of his shirt, then put them back on. "All right?"

She paused and licked her lips again, watching his gaze drop and concluding there was nothing absurd about the powerful feeling that inspired, then nodded. "All right."

* * *

Petunia turned up on her side, watching Percy sleep in the blue evening light. He wouldn’t stay the whole night, probably, or at least, he never had yet when they weren't alone, but if he wanted to go, he could wake on his own; she certainly wasn't going to chase him off.

It was still a surprise to her, how much she enjoyed sleeping with Percy. In either sense.

Vernon had been as demanding in his sleep as he had been awake, snoring and snorting and thrashing about until depressingly often she'd awakened with a strange bruise on her hip or her shoulder or a scrape on her thigh. Percy slept quietly, on his side of the bed (except when he fell asleep warm around her, his ankles tangled with hers, breathing in her hair) and was still (except when he woke and reached for her, hands splayed wide on her stomach, lips against her jaw). It wasn't the same thing at all--not that he'd be here if it were, because it had taken her _asking_ , which she still remembered blushing, to take things any further than the couch.

The night she'd moved in here, he'd sent her upstairs alone with her lips chapped but unbruised and her stomach knotted with frustration she didn't even know how to recognize, while he'd called a pillow and blanket to his hands from the closet and bedded down on the couch. She'd heard him, walking about on the ground floor for a long time after she was in bed, staring at the ceiling, her thighs tense and her cheeks warm and flushed, but when she'd arisen in the morning, he'd been asleep on the couch still. She'd started tea and stared at Fleur's French coffee machine wondering whether the reason it seemed inexplicable was that it was French, or that it was magical, until he'd awoken, and they'd talked again, and kissed again, until Bill and Fleur turned up, toward noon.

He'd been back for tea, then lunch the next day, and supper after her first day at work, and Fleur had watched them knowingly until Petunia had wondered if it was possible to acquire a sunburn from blushing. But he hadn't asked for anything beyond touching her hands or a quick kiss in the kitchen, not with Bill and Fleur there, and each evening, Petunia had gone up to bed and stared some more at the ceiling, wondering how it was that she was more confused, but also less upset about it, with each day.

Finally, on a Thursday afternoon when she'd come home a bit early and Bill and Percy were both a bit late, Fleur had asked her if she wanted to talk about it, and she'd concluded, after a startled pause, that she did.

Fleur had assured her that Percy had always been a decent man even when he'd shut himself away from his family (Petunia hadn't needed this assurance) and offered a number of suggestions which had made Petunia blush, but then, Fleur was--she said herself--unable not to be sexual, so what she said easily nearly always left Petunia tongue-tied.

Still, the most basic suggestion had been a good one, and on Friday evening when Fleur took Bill to visit her family in France for the weekend to share her happy news, Petunia carefully, quietly, asked Percy if they could take things further. She'd told him her body was thin and pale and not young any more, that she wasn't sure she really knew what she wanted, that she understood if the reason he wasn't pushing for more was that her breasts were flat and uninspiring and her skin was--he'd cut her off with the least gentle kiss they'd shared yet and told no, that really, really wasn't it.

She'd been pleasantly surprised to learn that all that staring at the ceiling was directly related to all the time Percy hadn't been spending with his hands on parts of her body Vernon hadn't ever touched with his hands at all.

She'd been even _more_ pleasantly surprised to learn--at _her_ age, which was probably a bit horrifying, but was also perhaps not entirely her fault--that Fleur's assertions as to why this was a good idea were entirely, completely true.

By the time Bill and Fleur returned on Sunday night, she'd also concluded there was, in fact, something to be said for the weight of salty musky flesh on her tongue--or she'd been remembering it entirely wrong, or, Percy suggested, Vernon was just disgusting--and that Percy was utterly brilliant at everything they were doing--or, he suggested, Vernon was not only disgusting, but an idiot. As he'd made this suggestion on his elbows over her, sweat dribbling down his brow, his body throbbing inside her as she pulsed and gasped and tried not to be completely indecent by begging for more to make up for lost time right this minute, she hadn't been inclined to disagree.

He never stayed all night, except when Bill and Fleur had been gone and he could make the excuse of keeping her company, but he was often here late, and Petunia thought at this point she'd had twice as much sex with him than she'd had in her entire twenty-year marriage. 

He was right; Vernon _was_ an idiot.

"What are you thinking?" 

He'd awakened while she was remembering, sliding his hand under the thin sheet to rub his knuckles against her stomach. The light coming in through the open window was all but gone, but she could see his eyes gleam, just a little, and she knew he could see her, up on her elbow and silhouetted against the light. "Just thinking," she said.

"I believe I forgot to ask before, in the rush to disrobe you: how are you? Everything all good?"

"Mostly."

"Only mostly?" 

She heard his smile and knew he'd heard hers, and she rolled back onto her back, grasping his hand and tugging him toward her. "Well. Work's going well, after all, and Kingsley seems pleased enough with the changes. And Alice--did I tell you? She's walking on her own. Frank's less well, but still, coming along. Neville's getting to know his parents a bit."

"You told me, yes. What else?" He rubbed slow circles on her belly, fingers lingering in the smooth skin under her breasts, skin she'd never known until quite recently liked to be touched.

"Dudley reports he expects Vernon to sign the papers in the next few weeks, though that's probably because Augusta went and told him to; she's not exactly the wilting flower sort."

"True. Go on."

"Fleur's well and starting to feel less ill and more glowing. Your mother doesn't hate me for robbing her cradle. Harry's happy to be starting his training and trailing about after your sister, which we will drop from discussion because the age gap _there_ , between you and her, is only five years. The memorial is set to open on schedule."

"Uh-huh." His hand circled further, the pads of his fingers brushing over her nipples and trailing down onto her thighs. "None of this explains the mostly. That is to say, it all sounds like the goodness ought to be unqualified."

"Oh, I suppose." She chuckled. "It's only that it turns out my--this word sounds quite juvenile, but then, I suppose given my newness to the experience, it's not unreasonable. It turns out my boyfriend leaves me to wake alone very nearly every morning. I've been considering ways to coerce him into staying. Any advice?" She caught his hand on her thigh, stopping him, and turned inward, pushing him onto his back and planting her knees on either side of his hips.

"As it happens, I have inside information," he said, going right back to work with his fingers, sliding his hand between her thighs. "Your boyfriend, and by the way, it turns out he likes being called that and doesn't have a problem with it sounding young, has his reasons."

She groaned and dug her fingers into the flesh of his chest as his fingers circled. "Oh?"

"And, for what it's worth, I may have advice."

She could feel the heat of his erection growing between them, and spread her knees a bit more to press against it. "I'd like that, Percy."

He put one hand on her hip, grinding them together, and pulled her face down to meet his, kissing her gently, and whispered, "He only doesn't want to crowd you."

"He's not crowding me, unless positioning himself just here--" She pushed her hand between then and pressed a fingertip to the end of his penis-- "is crowding, in which case, I wish he would."

"Mmm, he's happy to accommodate that, but honestly, he wants to let you set the pace. He can wait, any time you're not ready."

"So I should just ask him to stay?" She kissed him back, then lifted herself up enough to reach down and position him before sliding backward.

"I think you just did," he said. He held her close, one forearm wrapped around her upper back, one hand splayed much lower on her arse, and moved slowly, pushing her down and pulling her up as he nibbled at her ear and jaw. "But I hear he has a counter-suggestion."

"Oh?" She wasn't sure she was ever going to stop being surprised by arousal, by the rush of blood that she could hear in her speeding heartbeat, and it all but robbed her of the capacity to speak, but she also couldn’t get over that they talked during sex, talked about real things, with real words, and it didn't mean they never made noises that were indecent or gasped or grunted, but it was all right to that the conversations were interrupted by those things, as well.

"Mmm-hmm." Percy nibbled his way along her throat, still pressing them together and apart slowly, and murmured, "He actually would love to wake up with you, but thinks that optimally, that requires waking up someplace where he can do this to you in the shower or on the living room floor, if the need arises. Maybe not right this minute, but someday soon."

Petunia whimpered and pushed herself halfway upright, moving herself faster until his control snapped and he reached for the backs of her thighs, spreading her wider with his hands and pushing up faster as well. She felt the slick wetness her body had finally learned how to produce for this purpose, heard the slick slap of their bodies together, and shuddered as she pulsed around him.

A moment later, just as she was coming back to herself, she felt the warm splash of his orgasm inside her, and relaxed down onto him, panting against his shoulder.

He moved her hair out of his mouth and whispered her name. She looked up. "What?"

"I don't know if I can tell you how hot it is that I suggested I'd like to have more sex with you, and you responded by riding me harder."

Her body pulsed again, and he chuckled and added, "Though I'm sure I've told you before that I very much like that when I use crude words, you do that."

"It can't be helped."

"I know." 

She rolled off him and straightened out the sheet, then curled up against his side.

"You really want me to stay?"

She nodded.

He kissed the top of her head. "I hope you have a good alarm clock. I've an early meeting."

"I think I knew that."

"Did I mention it?"

She returned the kiss, to his shoulder, and shook her head. "I just assumed. You're not exactly out of demand, these days."

"Yes, well, that's because you're incorrigible."

She snuggled in closer, blinking away a sudden tear that stung in her eye at the easy and comfortable teasing. She knew she'd get used to that, like she'd got used to the sex and the interest in her opinions and the having a job, but she wasn't, yet. "Good night," she whispered.

"Good night."


End file.
